


Between Brothers

by diamonddaydream



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adopted!Ron Weasley, Adoption, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Banter, Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Brotherly Affection, Brotherly Angst, Brotherly Love, Brothers, Canon Era, Canon Related, Canon Rewrite, Domestic Fluff, During Canon, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Falling In Love, Family, Family Secrets, Father-Son Relationship, Fatherhood, First Kiss, First Love, Flirting, Fluff and Angst, Forbidden Love, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Getting Together, Good Narcissa Black Malfoy, Happy Ending, Hogwarts, Kissing Lessons, Love Potion/Spell, Love Triangles, Malfoy Manor, Mother-Son Relationship, Mutual Pining, Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter), Rare Pairings, Retelling, Romance, Secret Relationship, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Spy Draco Malfoy, Teen Crush, dramione - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:47:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 38
Words: 165,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24617065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diamonddaydream/pseuds/diamonddaydream
Summary: Hermione Granger wants to be over Ronald Weasley Malfoy. He's the boy born a Weasley but raised as a Malfoy as part of Lucius's rehabilitation after the 1st war. Draco is his "twin" brother, best friend, rival, and now their close ties are strained by their interest in Hermione, a secret magical accident from before they were born, and the looming return of a Dark Lord. Not too angsty, plenty of fluff, Dramione HEA, Complete.
Relationships: Arthur Weasley/Molly Weasley, Cho Chang/Harry Potter, Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Lucius Malfoy/Molly Weasley, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy, Narcissa Black Malfoy/Severus Snape, Pansy Parkinson/Ron Weasley
Comments: 349
Kudos: 442





	1. One

November 1981...

It was some of the final and the saddest business in settling the end of the war, the redistribution of the children. The previous evening, Albus Dumbledore had gone into Muggle Surrey, to leave Lily and James Potter’s newly orphaned son in the care of the boy's Aunt Petunia. It had been a grave visit with poor Petunia in heavy mourning for her sister, whether she understood it as that or not. In the end, Dumbledore was successful, and left the Boy Who Lived with her, assuring the little one’s safety at least until -- well, it didn't bear worrying over it too much for now.

Tonight, Dumbledore was on an errand of a different kind, with a child of a different kind, in a place of a different kind. He was not in the city but the countryside, walking up the lane to a sprawling old house. Like little Potter, the boy sleeping in Dumbledore's arms was not yet two years old. He slumped against his shoulder, his breath a little noisy but warm and sweet. 

The dark iron gates of the manor house grated and groaned, shifting, turning their bars out of the way, unlocking so Dumbledore and the child could pass through. Inside the house, fires were lit in hearths and lanterns, leading them down a corridor to a warm but not at all cozy drawing room. 

The little boy yawned and blinked in the orange light, sleepy but eagerly accepting the shortbread he was offered.

A woman stepped out of the shadows and onto the carpet beneath the chandelier. In the fire’s glow, her hair looked as orange as the child’s, but Dumbledore was her old headmaster, and he knew it to be gleaming blond.

“This is him?” she said, her voice low, almost reverent.

“It is,” Dumbledore said. “They call him Ronald. He will be two years old early this spring.”

She had come close enough to burrow her hands into the hand-knitted blanket in which he’d been wrapped. She pulled him free of it and brought him to the settee before the fireplace, cradling him in her lap, smoothing his fine ginger hair, tracing the line of his long nose, caressing his silky cheeks with her knuckles, clearing the cookie crumbs away. She uttered a soft laugh as he smiled up at her, his eyes sparkling with the flickering firelight.

“Aren’t you a darling little one? Lucius, come and see him. He’s precious.”

Lucius Malfoy obeyed, stepping further into the room, the angles of his face dark with shadows.

“Blue eyes?” Naricssa asked.

Dumbledore nodded. “Yes, like his father." He raised his head to nod at Lucius. "Both of you know Arthur and Molly?”

Narcissa shook her head. “Only by reputation. They were in Lucius’s year in school, well above me.”

“Of course,” Dumbledore nodded. “Lucius, perhaps you will find, as most of us do, that this boy is more like his mother than his father.”

This was no idle observation. That the boy did not look quite so much like his father would make all of this easier.

Lucius sneered all the same. “What is he, the Weasleys' ninth-born son? Or a nice round tenth-born?”

“Sixth,” Dumbledore said. “Not that their surplus was much of a comfort to poor Molly tonight. She was quite beside herself when she finally let me bring him to you.”

Narcissa tutted. “Good thing she has her noble do-gooder senses to comfort her. And it’s not as if she’s dead to him. She can visit with him from time to time, and he’ll be told his background, eventually, mostly.” She lifted the boy slightly off her lap. “He’s a few months older than our Draco, and I'm sure they’ll be a matched set before long, but he’s a fair bit larger right now -- “

“This is the only possibility the Wizengamot will accept?" Lucius interrupted in a voice close to a snarl. "We raise this Weasley child as our own or it's prison for me?"

Dumbledore sighed. "Well, we can't very well ask something so difficult of a Muggle family. They know nothing of our world, or our urgent need to heal the rift in our society, or your own personal court-ordered penance, Lucius. It’s one thing for the court to say you must raise a child from the other side of the conflict as your own, but quite another to work out the details. We have done our best."

Lucius Malfoy paced in front of the fire, scratching at his forearm, still not looking at the child, sneering, "Our best. Yes, and the stars know we can't be trusted to raise the orphaned Boy Who Lived, naturally."

"None of us can,” Dumbledore said, rather gently. “He is protected by particular magic that requires him to make his home with his Muggle family. And yes, Lucius, even if it weren’t so, after raising a defense of being so easily bewitched into Voldemort's service, well -- questions about fitness could arise."

It was a criticism Lucius could not argue without giving up his entire defense. His pacing became quicker, more like stomping. 

"You may find," Dumbledore said, "that there are certain other affinities." 

Narcissa interrupted, crooned soothingly at her husband. "Lucius darling, come sit with us."

"Us?" He stopped pacing, covering his face with his hands. "Excuse me, Professor. I'd like a private word with my wife."

"Certainly," he said, and his head was suddenly enfolded in a sphere that cut off the sight and sound of the drawing room. The Malfoys could hear music playing faintly from inside, an oompa band.

"Cissa, really," Lucius began, "you're acting like it's already settled that he'll be staying."

"Well, isn't it?" she said. Ronald's fingers closed over her forefinger while he sat unfazed watching Lucius, as if he was accustomed to animated shouting in people much larger than himself. "The Wizengamot requires us to show our good faith by raising a blood traitor's child as our own, and it makes sense that the child should be little Ronald -- "

"But why are the Weasleys willing?” he said, eliciting a laugh from little Ronald as he rounded on them, his white hair flying. “Molly and Arthur are not friends of mine but they are not strangers either. I've always known they'd connive and make enormous sacrifices in the name of their high and righteous principles. But giving us a child -- it's too much. This child isn't penance, he's surveillance -- a spy."

"He is whatever we raise him to be," she said, standing and bringing the boy toward her husband. "Once he’s ours, your son and mine, it won't matter what anyone intended when they sent him here as an infant. And the fact is, Lucius, we either accept the court's ruling and keep the boy, or we send you to Azkaban and our family as we know it is destroyed."

She wedged little Ronald between them. He raised a pudgy pink hand to pat Lucius’s lean cheek, grinning up at him as if this was a marvelous joke. The boy did look like Molly, not so much in how he was made but in how he used his face and eyes to look into Lucius’s own. This close, there was something of his father about him too. Lucius closed his eyes.

He didn't see that Narcissa’s eyes were glistening as she bowed her head and pressed her lips to little Ronald’s forehead. "Lucius," she called him back, "since you and I can't have any more children, this is our last chance at a second one -- at a brighter, richer future. And he is Draco's one chance at a sibling. It might be good for our boy to not grow up an only child. It will change his life, and something tells me -- a strong feeling, almost like divination -- that it will be for the better."

Lucius scoffed. "You want our Draco to have siblings? Siblings like yours?"

"No," she said, placing her hand over Ronald’s as he patted Lucius’s cheek. "A sibling like this."

\-----------------------------------------

Much Later...

No one was sure what went on at Malfoy Manor over the summer between Draco and Ronald’s second and third years at Hogwarts, but something definitely changed. The boys came back to school tall as grown men, deep voiced, and instead of wearing their hair slicked back, they both wore it loose, almost flowing. No one doubted anymore whether Draco had properly earned his spot as Slytherin seeker. Clearly he had. And Ronald, with his confidence, natural talent, the benefit of flying lessons since he was in primary school, and the top equipment Lucius provided every season, easily won the position of keeper for Gryffindor in that year’s quidditch tryouts. 

Everyone at school had noticed all of this, and the Malfoy brothers became something of a personality indicator among students who fancied boys: are you a Draco or a Ronald fan?

That was two years ago. Now at the beginning of fifth year, the shock of the Malfoy brothers’ transformation was over but the line they carved through their year was solid, almost uncrossable.

They were first divided when they were eleven, waiting in Kings Cross to board the Hogwarts Express for the first time.

“Do not sit in the same compartment,” Lucius Malfoy instructed his boys through the clouds of steam on the platform. “Harry Potter is somewhere on the train. His friendship would be a great asset to us and we’re more likely to get it if we spread ourselves out.”

“Yes, Father,” they said in unison, punching each other afterward, each accusing the other of being a copycat.

Narcissa separated them, drawing Ronald away. “Have you noticed them, darling? They’re standing not far from here, all in a big clump.”

His eyes grew large. “The Weasleys?”

She nodded. “Yes, of course. They’re here seeing off their twins, and that older one. Looks like he might be a prefect.”

There they were, noisy and laughing, all of them in their shabby homemade clothes except for Percy who was already in his school robes. This was Ronald’s birth family, his flesh and blood, even the little girl tagging along with them, the daughter they had to replace him after they gave him away to his real family to settle some hard feelings at the end of the war. 

“The twins,” Ronald echoed. 

If this pair of boys, just two years older than him, the ones who were still toddlers when he was born -- if they weren’t such a rowdy handful, maybe she would have kept him. That's what Ronald was thinking as he looked across the platform at Molly Prewett Weasley, his birth mother, his real mother’s cousin of some sort. She was small like Narcissa, but robust and ruddy where Narcissa was waifish and fair. She was pleasant to look at anyway, like something good to eat. 

Ronald had not failed to notice that whenever they were near Molly Weasley, it was Father who stared most.

“Would you like to go say hello?” Narcissa asked him. “You haven't seen them since Christmas, and the older boys will be your schoolmates now. Might be best to get used to them sooner rather than later.”

Ronald sighed and followed his mother down the platform toward the Weasleys for another of their stiff, pained greetings.

Draco and Lucius did not follow them, though Lucius continued to stare. “You will find, Draco,” he began, “ that some families are better than others. See that your brother remembers it too.”

“Yes, Father.”

After a childhood of rough and ready closeness, school sped the boys away from each other. As Lucius hoped and as Narcissa had feared, Ronald was sorted into Gryffindor, with Potter and his older blood brothers. That first evening, the Malfoy boys stood at the back of the Great Hall after the sorting, as the rest of their houses filed past them, Ronald’s making for the stairs, into the tower, Draco’s heading down, below the lake. 

The boys weren’t like the Patil twins -- the pretty, dark-haired girls sharing a weepy goodbye -- but they were uncomfortable, unmoored, shrugging at each other, helpless, not sure how they’d sleep in separate rooms for the first time in either of their memories. 

“Oh, go on,” a bushy-haired first-year Gryffindor girl said as she shouldered between them. “Honestly, you’re holding up the entire line.”

At first, Ronald sought out Harry Potter mostly to please his father, but their friendship soon became motivated by genuine affection which grew stronger with each one of their misadventures. The last of Potter’s infamous exploits, though the apex of it hadn’t involved Ronald directly, was the most outlandish of all. He was claiming that the Dark Lord had returned at the end of the Tri-wizard Tournament. 

The Malfoy boys’ parents scoffed at the claim, but while Lucius continued to encourage Ronald to stay close to Potter, Narcissa had had enough and spent the summer touring Russia, taking Ronald to meet the great wizard’s chess masters to learn what he could from them. 

“Potter’s wild stories aren’t all Ronald needs to leave behind in Britain,” Draco had confided in Lucius. “There’s also the business of Hermione Granger.”

Lucius had winced. “Potter’s Mudblood?”

“The same,” Draco had said, relating the very public spat between the girl and Ronald during the Yule Ball. On Boxing Day, Draco had called Ronald out as jealous that Granger had gone to the ball with Viktor Krum. 

“Of course I was jealous,” Ronald had snapped back. “When she came down that staircase, all cleaned up, when she danced in his arms, smiling and laughing and bright as an angel -- bloody hell, Draco, every bloke at school was jealous. Don’t tell me you weren’t.”

Draco didn’t. He had eyes and -- other body parts, not the least of which was a heart.

But he did tell their father that Ronald needed some time away. That time was over now, and they were heading back to school for their fifth year. They were late to the train station, leaving their parents behind the barrier as they sprinted ahead with their trunks, scrambling on board as the coaches began to move. 

Leaning, panting against the walls of the narrow train corridor, Draco used his wand to dry the sweat and steam from Ronald’s face. “You’re a sight, Ronald. What will your fans say?”

“Cheers, mate,” Ronald replied, flicking Draco’s hair into place, doing a bad job of it on purpose. “Or rather, благодарю вас.”

Draco smirked, batting Ronald’s hand away. “You did manage to pick up some Russian then.”

“Yeah.”

“But just to impress Granger.”

“Yeah.”

He punched Ronald’s arm, snickering, “Pathetic.”

“Definitely, yeah. Going to be worth it though.” They started making their way toward the front of the train, where the prefects would be meeting.

“You’re lucky Dad's first priority is for you to stay near Potter,” Draco said, “or they’d have shipped you right off to Durmstrang as soon as they found out you fancied a Muggle-born girl.”

It was Ronald doing the punching now, and with substantially more vigor. “They know about Hermione? You told them? How could you tell them? There isn’t even anything to tell yet.”

Draco rubbed his arm, his voice rising. “What? It was for your own protection. I did it out of love for you.”

Ronald sneered at his sarcasm. “Just keep your bleeding mouth shut, alright?”

“Well, we can safely predict that’s not going to happen.” It was Hermione Granger, sliding the door to the prefects’ compartment open, standing in the opening in a perfectly ordinary, un-provocative posture but causing the boys to stagger back all the same. 

Caught off guard, they both called her name at once, their voices sounding over each other as, “Gr-erm-rion-ger-y.”

She rolled her eyes. “Look sharp, Malfoys. Get in here before you disrupt our meeting any further.”

The meeting was a dull slog of patrol schedules, the rereading of regulations, a warning that Fred and George Weasley had begun selling magical joke and prank products out of a suitcase in the Gryffindor common room, some of them quite potent and not to be taken lightly.

“Don’t look at me,” was all Ronald had to say about that.

Effective immediately, the train needed to be patrolled, and it was agreed that, to make up for being late, the Malfoy brothers should take the first shift.

“Yeah? But what if we can’t BEHAVE by ourselves?” Ronald said, shoving Draco sideways, sending him careening into Pansy Parkinson. 

“Yeah, you wouldn’t want to send us out there as bad EXAMPLES,” Draco answered back with a shove of his own, pushing Ronald backward so he was lying in Hermione’s lap, blinking up at her.

“Honestly!” she shouted, pushing him upward with both hands. “I have no idea what your heads of house were thinking, nominating the pair of you as prefects. Right. Stand up, Ronald. You can come with me.”

Draco frowned. “Why is she acting like she can order everyone around like she’s Head Girl?”

Ronald spun around, turning his back to Hermione, mouthing the words, “Shut it,” to his brother before following her out the door.

With a huff, Hermione led the way through their patrol.

“It’s nice to see you again, Hermione,” Ronald began in a sweet voice that sounded almost sorry for the bother he’d already been. “Did you enjoy your summer? You aren’t quite as tanned as you usually are after the holidays. Did you have to spend all your time indoors?”

She stopped her arms folded across her chest. “Ronald, you sound like an ominous Malfoy spy when you question me like this.”

He raised both his hands. “What am I supposed to say to that?”

She turned and kept walking. “Well, how did you spend the summer? You’re paler and less freckled than usual yourself.”

He pounced at the chance to boast. “Right you are. I was off playing chess in Russia. I even -- “

“And Draco,” she said. “Did he come along to Russia?”

Ronald smirked. “Now Hermione, you know you’re the only one of my personal acquaintances with the patience to watch me play chess.”

“That is not true.”

“Sure it is,” he said. “You get quite enthralled. Which makes it odd that you’re interrupting the tales of my chess-capades to ask about Draco.”

She huffed again. “It’s called making small talk. It’s what polite people do.”

He yelled a laugh. “Picking away at the finer points of social etiquette with a Malfoy is probably not a battle you want to start.“

“May I tell you something, Ronald?” she asked, batting her eyelids, her imitation of a well-mannered pure-blooded girl. “There is a word in Muggle parlance for people like you and your brother. A dirty word I won’t even say to you. But you should know that’s what you are.”

He stepped closer, towering over her. “A word for us?”

“Yes.”

“But you won’t say it?”

“No, I won't.”

“Come on, Hermione. You can’t leave us hanging like that. At least give us a hint.”

She tapped her foot, considering. “It’s a compound word. The last part is ‘boys’ and the first part is the dirty part and it starts with the letter F. I have never said it in my life and am not about to break that streak over the likes of the Malfoy brothers.”

Ronald muttered to himself. “F boys. Fit boys? Fine boys?”

She rolled her eyes. “You think I have never said the words fit or fine?”

He threw up his hands. “I have no idea. What is the last letter in the word?”

“You have got to be joking.”

“No, sincerely.“

She stamped her foot. “K, Ronald. The last letter is K.”

He was muttering to himself again. “Fak-boys, fake-boys, feek-boys, feck-boys…” He stopped, his eyes wide. “Hermione!”

She was walking backwards, laughing at his outrage. “I’m sorry, but it describes the pair of you perfectly, especially you.”

“It does not. Draco and I,” he puffed out his chest, “we were raised as gentlemen, virtuous, chivalrous, we love women, would lay down our very -- “

“Oh, give over.”

“Both of you give over.” It was Harry, opening the door of the compartment where he’d been sitting alone until he heard them shouting.

Hermione squealed his name and threw her arms around his neck.

“She greeted me exactly the same way,” Ronald told Harry over her shoulder.

“I might have, if he wasn’t such an F-boy. Not like you, Harry. Lovely to see you.”

Harry was frowning as she freed him from her embrace. “What are you on about?”

“Leave it,” they said at once.

Back in the prefects’ carriage, Pansy Parkinson slumped over, her head falling into Draco’s lap with the burnt out intimacy that exists between people who have tried dating and given it up. “Did you see him, Draco? Same as always. He didn’t even look at me.”

Draco patted her hair. “Sorry, Pansy. But it’s still early in the year. You’ve lots of time to win Ronald over -- or to come to your senses. ”

She waved her arm at the ceiling. “What does he see in that awful, fussy, bossy Granger?”

Draco settled into his seat. “That’s complicated. Our mother is a sweet person -- when it comes to us, at any rate. She bosses so gently it hardly registers. And Ronald adores her, of course. But have you ever noticed his birth mother? She’s got this way of overbearing that he must have acquired a taste for before they gave him up. He’s desperate to get himself lovingly bossed again.”

Pansy sat up. “You’re saying Ronald is trying to date Granger in place of his birth mother? That’s disgusting.”

Draco shrugged. “Well, not literally. It’s a Muggle concept, taken from the Greeks by an unsavoury Austrian doctor a century ago. Makes a bit of sense though. Why else would someone like Ronald have an interest in Granger? Now don’t fret, Pansy,” he said, patting her knee. “They’ll never make a go of it. Granger needs someone more disciplined, more serious, who knows how to suffer, who is capable of reaching her on an intellectual level that’s more about books and less about monkeying around Russia with a chess board.”

It was Pansy’s turn to pat his knee. “It didn’t go away this summer, did it Draco? Your crush on your brother’s girl -- it’s still in full swing.”

“By the stars, Pansy, what are you talking about?" he said, brushing her hand away. "And, as Hermione Granger will be the first to tell you, she is not Ronald Weasley Malfoy’s girl.”

"You are actually the first person to tell me that, Draco. And on more than one occasion. Which makes you," she said, leaning in to whisper into his ear, "the perfect man to help me with a little plan."

Draco frowned. "No. No plotting this year. We're prefects, about to write our OWLs. This year there will be no dueling Potter, no non-committal snogging, no sneaking around pranking my brother. Nothing untoward."

"Please, Draco," she said. "There's only one boy at school interesting enough to distract a girl from a Malfoy brother -- "

He scoffed. "You'll never get Granger to fancy Potter. They’re like siblings who aren’t related.”

Pansy made a frightening purring sound. “You and Ronald are also siblings who aren’t related -- "

Draco faked a retch. “Let me out. I’m about to be sick.”

“Will you sit down?” Pansy laughed. “I don't mean for you to help me distract Granger with Potter. I mean the only boy at school interesting enough to throw a girl off a Malfoy brother is ANOTHER Malfoy brother."

Draco's gaze drifted out the window. "You're saying…"

She gave three slow nods, the tips of her sleek bobbed hair moving across her cheeks. "Yes, Draco. I need you to get Ronald to move on from Granger, by distracting her with you."


	2. Two

Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson sat in the train compartment most of the fifth year prefects had already vacated, her arm over his shoulder as she whispered in his ear.

“Yes, Draco,” she said. “The only boy at school interesting enough to throw a girl off a Malfoy brother is ANOTHER Malfoy brother. I need you to get Ronald to move on from Granger, by distracting her with you."

He rubbed his ear to clear her whisper away. “Pansy, I don’t know how you and your sisters get on, but I’m not about to go to war with my one and only brother over a girl who has only ever annoyed me.”

She sat back, pouting. “Come on, Draco. Help me.”

“You don’t need my help getting boys’ attention,” he laughed. “Look at you. You’re a stunner. The problem is Ronald, not you.”

She scooted away from him, her voice getting louder. “Spare me your false compliments. If I was really so attractive you and I would still be together.”

At this, the remaining prefects stopped chatting to gawk at them. Draco ignored it, scoffing at Pansy. “What is the matter with you? You’re acting like we’re not well past this. There’s more to dating than just -- “

“Oh, don’t start,” she said, standing up. “Goldstien, get up and come patrolling with me.”

Anthony Goldstien’s eyes darted around the compartment, as if he couldn’t believe she wasn’t looking for someone else before he hopped up to slide the door open for Pansy and follow her out. 

Finding herself left alone in the compartment with Draco Malfoy, Padma Patil tossed her head and scowled out the window. Padma had been the object of Ronald’s consolation snog after his row with Hermione Granger after the Yule Ball last Christmas, and now Draco was the object of her silent treatment. He sighed heavily and stood up to leave, jamming his hands into the pockets of his trousers as the door slid closed behind him.

Inside his pocket, something was warm against his fingers, the signal galleon his father had given him after the quidditch world cup last year. Ron had been forced to attend the cup with the Weasleys and didn’t know what had passed between Lucius and Draco during that time. Ever since then, Lucius had been drawing Draco closer, discreetly grooming him to come into his own as the Malfoy heir when he came of age less than two years from now. 

There was no doubt that Ronald would be well-provided for his entire life, but there was also no doubt that he wouldn’t be the one to inherit the family lands and fortune. There was old blood magic in Malfoy Manor, right down to its foundations, and though the manor seemed to respond to Ronald as if he was a natural born son of the family, it was better to be safe, and to make sure it passed to a true Malfoy son bound to it by blood. Draco had to be the one. Ronald seemed to expect and accept it -- which was another good reason for Draco to return the favour and respect Ronald’s claims when it came to things like relationships with girls.

Draco pulled the galleon from his pocket to read its message, wincing a little, reading it with one eye closed as if to protect himself from it. The messages on the galleon were getting stranger every week. At first they had been instructions about which of his classmates to build a network with -- encouraging him to spend less time with Crabbe and Goyle and more with boys like Nott and Zabini. Building alliances with girls was important too, especially the Greengrass sisters. Astoria was only thirteen but Draco was expected to start courting her in the next year or two. She was pretty enough, but in a little girl way that was decidedly unsettling in a romance.

The newest development in the galleon messages was their sudden shift toward Harry Potter. For the first four years they’d been at school, Lucius was content to have Ronald carrying home tales of Harry Potter’s business -- the mundane, the fantastical, and the stories that had to be bald-faced lies. Whatever Lucius thought of them, he didn’t try to colour Ronald’s perceptions of Potter. He smirked, tutted quietly, sneered secretively at Draco, and let it be. 

Draco had never needed much prodding to get him to pester Potter. A rivalry existed between them that felt somehow natural, unavoidable. Everyone at school seemed to put it down to Draco being jealous of Potter’s closeness to Ronald. Maybe they were somewhat right, but it was more than that. 

And now there were adults involved in the rivalry, taking all the fun out of it, raising the stakes far too high. Professor Snape had always goaded them on, and Lucius joined in ever since that run-in with the Weasleys in a bookstore at the beginning of second year, when he and Mr. Weasley had scuffled and a shelf full of books had fallen on their heads and Mrs. Weasley had pressed her hands against each of the men’s chests and shrilled at them to leave each other alone, for stars’ sake.

Today on the train, Lucius was ordering Draco to deliver a message to Harry Potter. Draco read it from the surface of the galleon in a whisper. “You can be sure I’ll be dogging your footsteps,” it read, complete with a direction to put particular emphasis on the word “dog.” Draco sighed and pulled at his hair. How was he supposed to storm up to Potter and say something like that without seeming like a nutter?

Groaning, he came scuffing down the corridor of the train, peering through every window of every compartment until he got to the end, where Potter was packed in with Ronald, Granger, Longbottom, that Loony girl from Ravenclaw, and Ronald’s blood sister, who he was too obviously trying to ignore as he gorged himself on chocolate. Honestly, Ronald, it’s not as if Mother hadn’t packed a splendid lunchbox for each of them. It was right here in Draco’s bag.

He took a deep breath and opened the door. Except for the Loony girl, everyone inside cringed at the sight of him in such close proximity to Potter. Either he would speak perfunctorily to his brother, or else he would try to start something with Harry. There were no other possibilities. Ronald hoped for the first one and called out to him, something indistinct, choking through a mouth full of chocolate.

“Chew it nicely, Ronald, I’m not here for you,” Draco snapped, his anger about being sent on this ridiculous errand powering the exchange. “You, Potter. We saw you at the train station. And you’d better believe we’ll be DOGGING your footsteps this year.”

Ronald merely rolled his eyes but Potter flinched and Granger, never any good at keeping her feelings off her face, shot Potter a look of panic. What was she afraid of? What made her forget that this was all a stupid game and Draco wasn’t much more than a harmless, bratty little brother? Whatever it was, she was springing to her feet, standing up, launching herself into Draco’s space, her face turned up to his as she hollered, “Get out!”

He should have been relieved to have delivered the message, spooked Potter, and been sent on his way. He should have backed out the door and left. But Granger had come too close, flared too angry, and it all felt too much like she was getting the better of him by chasing him off so hotly.

“Right,” he said, and as he backed out the open door, he clamped his hand around her wrist and tugged her outside with him. She stifled her own involuntary scream as he pulled her into the corridor and pushed her against the wall beside the door. 

He lowered his face to her level. “Get out, you say? Out here? Like this?”

“You let go of me,” she snarled, snatching her wrist out of his grip where he held it between them.

He released her without any resistance but didn’t move his feet, standing close, stooping so they were face to face, prefect’s badge to prefect’s badge, swaying with the movement of the train. Angry, embarrassed, helpless to defy his father, Draco’s breath was coming hard and fast, and in return, he felt hers on his face. 

And strangely, the sight of Granger glaring at him was making it all better. He was regarding her with curiosity rather than contempt. This was the girl Ronald had liked for nearly a year -- the one he had fought a troll for, climbed onto the back of a massive enchanted chess knight to fight for, but also the girl he had brought out into the open and exposed to danger at the World Cup, the one he had stood in the marble staircase and argued with until she cried for dancing all night with another man.

Draco wasn’t angry anymore but his pulse was still drumming in his throat. Could she see the rush of blood through his skin, the red in his neck and cheeks? Was this anything like what Ronald felt when he was close to her?

He was raising his hand to cover his throat. At the movement, her eyes were growing larger, as if she was afraid he was going to touch her again -- look at that, Malfoy, her eyes are brown...

The door was flung open as Ronald threw himself out into the corridor with them. “Draco, what are you playing at?” he was demanding, trying to step between his brother and Hermione but finding it would take more force than he was prepared to use. 

He seemed to understand, his pale ginger eyebrows rising into his fringe. “It’s him again. Dad put you up to coming in like that -- “

Draco whirled away from Hermione to glare at his brother. “Quiet, Ronald. Have her back. And here, you forgot your lunch.”

He heard Granger shouting as he retreated down the corridor. “Have her back? What is that supposed to mean?”

Draco didn’t turn back as Ronald told her. “Don’t be mad at me. It was him who said it.”

“Listen, I am not a quaffle for the two of you to lob back and forth as it suits you.”

“Of course you’re not. And don’t make it sound like a habit.”

“Well then, see that it doesn’t become one…”

Draco had reached Crabbe and Goyle’s coach -- the one no one else wanted to ride in. He shoved the door open and fell into a seat, propping his feet on the cushion opposite him. The pair of them said nothing, nodding their welcomes before going back to their massive sandwiches. Draco swatted Goyle’s arm.

“Wha?” he grunted back at him.

“Nothing,” Draco said. Crabbe and Goyle were great like this -- uncomplicated, easy, like smelly quidditch equipment that should really have been gotten rid of but that was so well broken in it seemed like a shame. Pansy, Nott, Zabini, the Greengrasses -- all of them were much, much more difficult.

Draco turned over in his seat. “Wake me when we’re almost there.”

____________________

The first weekend after classes recommenced, the students spent Saturday night in their common rooms, buzzing over the new quidditch rosters, despite them being much the same as the old rosters. Harry Potter was seeker for Gryffindor, Ronald Malfoy was the keeper, Fred and George Weasley were beaters, and so on, and Hermione Granger was concerned that no one was taking the vicious onslaught of homework which came with their OWLs nearly seriously enough.

Meanwhile, floors below Gryffindor Tower, the Hogwarts board of governors was holding their annual autumn alumni fundraising banquet in the Great Hall. There was food, sleepy chamber music, speeches heady with school nostalgia, a silent auction of goods no one wanted and services no one would ever use. And trudging through it all were everyone’s parents, dressed in evening dress robes they hardly ever wore and which, truth be told, would have fit most of them better a decade earlier.

This description did not apply to Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, who looked quite at home overdressed anywhere, even in a school hall. They stood arm-in-arm at the head of the room, on the floor in front of Dumbledore’s lectern, bowing and nodding, making genteel smalltalk with all the usual donors.

But not everyone greeted him. Coming in late and seating themselves as close to the back of the room as they could were Arthur and Molly Weasley. They had never attended the school’s alumni gala before, but the twins had done substantial damage to the castle over the years, and with them peddling their new, untested products here now, things only stood to get worse. It was high time some of it was repaid. And, Arthur reasoned, if they could get a meal out their donation, they may as well jump at it.

They were regretting it now. After the long, painful dinner, Arthur promised Molly they would leave just as soon as he was finished glad-handing with some of his Ministry colleagues. She agreed to wait but would not spend a minute more in the banquet hall.

“Look for me in the courtyard. And do hurry along,” she said, swishing off toward the exit in her best pink taffeta robes.

The courtyard had been replanted as a hedge maze for the evening, making for endless corners and crannies where the grownups could confer and negotiate and nurture their networks of influence and power.

Molly was fanning herself, sighing with relief at being out of the hall, when she turned a corner into a lovely clearing decorated with a statue of a rearing unicorn and furnished with a low stone bench. On the bench, legs stretched out in front of himself as if admiring their length, sat Lucius Malfoy.

At the sight of her, he stood at once, smiling unevenly, one side of his mouth tugging the other upward, as if against its will. “Mrs. Weasley,” he drawled as she stepped between the hedges.

She startled slightly, covering her inelegant jerk at the sound of his voice crooning her name by smoothing her skirts, nodding a curt reply, eyeing the tiny liquor glass in his hand, glinting with moonlight. “Mr. Malfoy.”

He tipped the rest of his drink into his mouth and set the glass down on the plinth of the statue. “My congratulations on your sons’ new enterprise. They’re already causing a stir, and not only in business circles but also in,” he paused, pacing closer to her, “ potions.”

“Well, I should hope so,” she said, drawing her shoulders up with a prim stiffness even as she said, “they’ll need to do well enough to make some mighty donations to the school after all the damage they leave in their wake.”

Lucius laughed, a low rumble. “Don’t speak of money, Mrs. Weasley. It doesn’t suit you.”

Her posture stiffened even further. “What is there to speak of but money at an alumni banquet?” she said. “And I, Mr. Malfoy, do not enjoy the luxury some women do of acting as if money is immaterial. Now, if you’ll excuse me -- “

“Please, Molly,” he said, snagging her long, billowing sleeve between his white fingers as she attempted to pass by him. ‘Don’t take offense. I meant none.”

She gave a bitter laugh, snatching her sleeve away, her powers of politeness disintegrating.

“About your sons’ forthcoming shop,” he went on. “I am told they plan to sell an extraordinary love potion. Did you know? One of their own brew. A Prewett family secret recipe perhaps?”

In the low evening light, it would have been impossible for him to detect the sudden flush in her cheeks but she turned her back to him all the same. “I couldn’t possibly explain the origins of all Fred and George’s goods. They have nothing to do with me.”

“You wouldn’t know all of them, to be sure. But the love potion, Molly,” he was close now, speaking over her shoulder. “Surely it’s brewed from the Mellitus shrubs growing all over the land around your ancestral home. Or are all of those plants still regularly purged, prone as they are to,” the front of his robes was nearly touching her back, “accidents?”

Spinning on the ball of her foot, she moved to brush past Lucius Malfoy and back into the Great Hall, to Arthur and the throngs of boring people and sanity. But his arms were around her, pulling her up and against him.

“Molly,” he purred, the softness of her between his arms, his face dropping into her hair, inhaling her scent, still so sweet.

She pushed against him. “Lucius -- Lucius, what are you doing?”

It was a question, not a refusal so he held her closer, humming into her ear. “Molly...”

“Lucius, you are drunk.”

He laughed. “A little.”

She twisted in his hold as he waited for her to demand with words that he let her go, as if it wasn’t plain enough. “Arthur and the boys will kill you, Lucius.”

He raised his face out of the ginger ringlets she’d set in her hair for the evening. “You know, I hope they do,” he said, his tone no longer teasing and playful, but profoundly sad. “It would be better for me than what’s to come.”

She looked up into his face. She wouldn’t have had to know him at all to be able to read the pain on it. But it had nothing to do with her, not directly. “You must tell me if something is happening, Lucius, especially if it endangers -- him.”

He was smirking again, tapping the end of her nose with his forefinger. “You’re an Order of the Phoenix spy this time ‘round Molly. Always knew it was just a matter of time.”

She was struggling against him in earnest now and he let her go, his arms falling limply to his sides. Molly huffed, straightening her hair, tidying her clothes.

“I do love him,” Lucius said, slumping to sit on the stone bench again. “Ronald -- I love him exactly as a father should, with all my heart.”

Molly gave another curt nod. “You had better.”

“Of course I do. There isn’t any reason why I wouldn’t love Ronald like my own son,” he said, the curving half-smile returning to his face. “Is there, Mrs. Weasley?”

\----------------------

The signals the Malfoy brothers used for calling each other out of their respective dorms needed improvement. The Slytherin dormitories had no door at all, nothing for Ronald to knock on, so when he wanted his brother, he took a quaffle and hurled it into the wall of the dungeon corridor where the door should be until Draco appeared or someone else came out to tell him Draco wasn’t in.

Maybe they would have improved this system if it didn’t work so well. Tonight, while their parents entertained donors in the Great Hall, and Harry Potter sulked about being thought a liar by half his classmates, and Hermione Granger frantically wrote essays, Ronald threw the quaffle at the stone wall just three times before Pansy Parkinson conjured the door and stood framed in it, smiling coyly at him.

Ronald swallowed. “Draco in?”

She nodded. “He’s working. Got scads of homework this year, or maybe you hadn’t noticed.”

“Get him anyway, will you?” he said.

She smirked. “Why, so the two of you can row over his manhandling of Hermione Granger on the train?”

Ronald scowled. This was exactly why he’d come. With everyone in Gryffindor in a bad mood, he thought, he may as well come to Slytherin tonight and enjoy a fight with Draco. But hearing Pansy say it made it sound petty and overblown. “It wasn’t manhandling,” he said. “We won’t row. Just go get him before I throw you over my shoulder and storm in, breaking that two hundred year streak of no-Gryffindors in your dorms.”

Pansy laughed. “Promise?”

“Parkinson -- “

“Fine, I’m going.”

Draco took her place in the door, wiping ink from his hands. “What?”

“Come down to the pitch with me.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to throw things at someone and it’s better you than someone who’d sue Dad over it.”

“Savvy,” Draco said, summoning his cloak.

Ronald’s eyes bulged. “Well, that’s coming along nicely, isn’t it. We just learned that this week.”

“You just learned it,” Draco said. “It’s wandless so I practiced it with Dad all summer while you were playing chess.”

They gave the Great Hall a wide margin as they moved outdoors, past all the grownups at the donor dinner.

“Look, I’m sorry I grabbed Granger,” Draco said. “She got in my face and -- I don’t know what came over me. But I’m sorry.”

It was enough for Ronald. He was already shrugging. “She’s alright. Don’t bother apologizing to her. That temper of hers though -- it does take some getting used to. And frankly it’s been vile since we got back. Even Harry’s noticed and demanded we stop squabbling. I miss it though.”

Draco shoved him sideways as they walked down the hill. “Maybe find someone to like who you don’t fight with.”

“I’ve tried that,” Ron said. “I’ve tried dozens of nice girls but it’s just -- it’s as if I feel nothing for them. As if there’s something wrong with me.”

“You’re not even sixteen and you haven’t found true love yet. There’s nothing wrong with that,” Draco said.

Ronald sighed deeper than ever. “It’s alright. I’m over it.”

Draco laughed at him, but not unkindly.

“Anyways,” Ronald resumed. “What’s up with Dad sending you to pester Harry about dogs?”

Draco felt his face blanch. “‘Dogging your footsteps’ is just an expression. It’s not literally about dogs.”

Ronald stopped walking. “Isn’t it?”

Draco stopped beside him. “Why does it matter so much?”

He didn’t know. But something had changed right before the beginning of fourth year, when Lucius split the boys up to send them to the quidditch world cup apart. They couldn’t see into each other as clearly as they once could -- or perhaps they could, they just didn’t like what they saw inside each other anymore.

Ronald tossed the quaffle as high into the air as he could. It was getting dark and as it flew up, it disappeared from view. Draco darted out in the direction he’d thrown it, his arms outstretched, catching it all the same.


	3. Three

The uncontested consensus at the school was that new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Dolores Umbridge, was a nightmare. 

Her fifth year class would have been dead boring -- no wands, no monsters, just assurances that all was well -- if it weren’t for Harry Potter winding her up into a shouting frenzy every time. 

Hermione Granger helped upset her too, but she was smarter about it, escaping without detention somehow. Even Draco was dazzled that time Umbridge set out to waste another day with more useless in-class reading of the textbook just to have Granger raise her hand to say she’d already read the entire thing. She had all the answers when Umbridge quizzed her on the book’s contents, trying to trip her up and make a liar, or worse in Draco’s opinion, a fool out of her. Granger not only answered, but tried to add something thoughtful about the book’s central issues.

Umbridge was having none of it.

“It would be funny to see her riled up,” Ronald agreed with Draco as they sat under a sycamore tree on the school grounds devouring one of their mother’s care packages, “if Harry’s detentions didn’t include actual bloody torture.” 

He told him about the cursed quill Umbridge made Potter use to write lines -- the one that cut every letter he wrote into his flesh.

Draco shuddered, flexing his fingers, pulling his pristine, unspotted white skin taut across the blue veins of his hand.

“It’s just as well you’ve kept your mouth shut in there, Draco,” Ronald said. “Uncharacteristic of you, but not stupid.”

Draco scoffed. “What do you mean? I’m always polite to teachers. It’s why my potions mark is near perfect while yours,” he sighed, “well…”

“Sucking up to Snape is not the same as having good manners,” Ronald said, pulling one of his mother’s perfect pastries apart to slurp the cream out of the centre.

Draco punched his arm. “As if you’ve never sucked up to a teacher. Remus Lupin ring a bell? Or that great oaf, Hagrid? Or even bleeding Mad-eye Moody, or whoever that was?” Draco shuddered at the memory. “And anyways, Dad told us before we left home this year to be on our best behaviour around Umbridge, always.”

Ronald swallowed a pastry whole. “When did he say that?”

Draco blinked, remembering. “Ah, it was when you were off on Weasley duty, spending that mandatory week with them after getting back from Russia. All Dad said was that Umbridge is very powerfully connected at the Ministry -- almost more powerful than Minister Fudge himself.”

Ronald frowned. “More powerful than the Minister? What can that even mean?”

Draco shrugged. “Just Dad talking things up, his usual drama I suppose. Still, I understood him well enough to know he means for us to keep quiet in her class. Umbridge is enough of a laugh thanks to Potter and Granger already. Nothing more for us to do.”

Ronald had been struck motionless by some new thought, a biscuit in each hand but no longer eating. “Granger,” he intoned. “I need a new way to relate to Granger, now that we promised Harry we wouldn’t argue so much. Being civil to one another is so hollow, boring. She and I, we need something -- something with the same emotional intensity as fighting. And maybe with a bit more, you know -- physical intensity.”

Draco coughed. “You’re making plans to snog her?”

“Well, obviously,” Ronald said. “I mean, eventually. Nothing concrete, but all kisses start as fantasies though, don’t they? You can’t do it until you can dream it, right? That kind of nonsense, like, looking longingly at her lips, flirty eye contact, smelling her hair, tuning in to the sound of her voice...”

Draco was sneering. “Granger’s voice.” He raised his hand, imitating her eagerness to answer questions in class. “Oh! Sir, sir! Call on me! Please!”

Ronald batted his arm down. “Shut it, you. And, it’s not a rhetorical question. I’m asking sincerely. Where does a good kiss start? It’s in your heart or something gaggy like that, isn’t it?”

Draco snorted. “You tell me.”

“Come on, Draco,” Ronald said, not quite pleading. “You must know how to craft a kiss so you really -- really feel something, a strong connection that makes you all overwhelmed and lovestruck. I don’t get it. But you must know what that’s like, I mean, how many girls have you kissed? Ten? Twelve?”

Draco was coughing again, clawing through the care package for the bottle of elderflower cordial their mother always included. “Two,” he said, wiping the drink from his mouth while his throat stopped spasming.

“No,” Ronald laughed. ‘What? No, it’s not possible. Only two? So there’s Pansy Parkinson, of course, and the Beauxbatons girl -- “

“Gisele, yeah. And that’s it.”

“No!”

Draco shoved him sideways. “Yes! Why? How many have you kissed?”

Ronald shifted where he sat in the grass. “Like, really, fully kissed?” He began to count on his fingers before giving up and throwing both of his hands in the air. “Quite a few, alright?”

Draco was laughing at him, and now Ronald was shoving him. “I said shut it, will you? It’s not funny. I don’t do it because I’m slaggy. It’s more like -- like it never feels the way everyone says it does for them. So I’ve been looking for it -- looking for what everyone says is out there, but I’ve never found, not in a dozen girls.”

Sitting under the tree, staring off into the distance over his uneaten sweets, Ronald Malfoy had taken on a rare look of vulnerable neediness. It was almost moving. Draco swallowed, posing a question that had to be said. “Maybe it’s not girls you want.”

Ronald shook himself. “No, it’s definitely girls. A girl in particular -- Hermione Jean Granger.”

“So follow through and snog her,” Draco said. “But don’t stake too much on it. If you kiss her and it doesn’t give you this transcendent experience you think everyone else is having, what’ll you do then?”

“See, that’s it exactly,” Ronald said. “The thought of kissing her is exciting and all that but it’s also terrifying. Do or die. And I actually have a theory about why I might be like this -- why everyone’s kissing was nice but just kind of missed me. I think I may be a victim of a magical accident, from a long time ago.”

Draco raised both of his eyebrows, leaning closer. “Explain.”

Ronald dusted the biscuit crumbs from his fingertips. “My birth parents, well, they conceived me while Fred and George were still extremely young and, there’s no doubt about it, extremely bad. Arthur and Molly Weasley -- they must have been exhausted and miserable during those years, with those twins in infant form to chase after. So maybe they used potions to -- to work on their relationship, if you know what I mean.”

Draco closed his eyes, shaking his head. “Relationship?”

“Yeah.” Ronald was squirming more than ever. “What if I was -- you know -- conceived while one or both of my birth parents was under the influence of a love potion?”

Draco blinked. “So what if you were?”

Ronald’s posture slumped, and he was muttering to himself. "That’s right. You don’t know anything.”

“Then tell me,” Draco said, his skin pricking with that unpleasant but invigorating feeling he got whenever their father sent him probing through Ronald’s thoughts and feelings after information on Potter and all the sappy adults who enable him. What didn’t Draco know that Ronald did? Was it something about the Order of the Phoenix they were trying to get back together? Father had warned him to let him know anything he found out about it.

Ronald sighed. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone. Least of all you.”

Draco sat back, waiting. It wouldn’t be long.

“Right,” Ronald said, “don’t tell anyone, not even Dad.”

“What is it?”

Ronald’s voice fell to almost a whisper. “It’s something Dumbledore told Harry, about You-know-who.”

Draco’s skin pricked more sharply than ever.

Ronald leaned in close. “Dumbledore said that the Dark Lord’s father was a Muggle who was bewitched by a love potion into marrying the Dark Lord’s mother. It was the big one too, Amortentia. Daddy Dark Lord didn’t stay with the witch and was never a proper father, but that wasn’t even the worst of it. Because You-know-who was conceived under a love potion, he can’t love anyone. It’s part of what makes him so cruel.”

Draco sat back. “Dumbledore’s cracked.”

“He isn’t,” Ronald said. “You know he’s not. You’re just talking like Dad for the sake of it, out of habit, as his precious little --. You know what? Never mind.” He was standing up, brushing himself off.

“Wait,” Draco was saying, tugging on his brother’s robes. “Ronald, you are not necessarily a junior Dark Lord incapable of love even if it is true that your birth parents were too tired for romance, used a potion, and ended up with you.”

Ronald yanked the hem of his robes out of Draco’s grip. “Only, they didn’t end up with me, did they? They gave me up. Maybe it was because they knew.”

Draco stood up, facing him. “Look, even if Dumbledore’s version is true, your birth parents actually love each other and always have. That’s nothing like the Dark Lord’s parents. It’s got to make a difference for you, and they would have known that all along. The Weasleys wouldn’t have used a love potion to be deceptive or forceful with each other. They probably began by asking politely.”

Ronald’s shoulders heaved. “You don’t know anything -- “

“Then let’s find out,” Draco said, dropping a hand on Ronald’s shoulder, trying his best at calm persuasion, every word ringing with an unspoken apology for being exactly the precious image of Lucius that Ronald could never be. “Let’s test your theories on your capacity to love. Don’t risk it all kissing Granger -- not yet. Work on seeing if you can achieve the kind of kiss you’re looking for with someone else first. A friendly volunteer. Prove it to yourself, then go about your life.”

“Volunteer,” Ronald echoed.

Draco smirked. “Yes. I have one already.”

\----------------------------------

It was almost curfew when Draco was hauling Ronald along the corridor, his fist closed in the fabric of his robes. “Come along, Ronald. We’re late. But when did you last clean your teeth?”

“Right after dinner,” Ronald said, blowing into his cupped hand.

“Good. And are you clean? I promised her you’d be clean.”

Ronald was pulling himself free of his brother, nodding at the people looking askance at them as they trotted away from Gryffindor Tower, toward the stairs. “Calm down, Draco. I’m always clean.”

Draco frowned. “Really? No quidditch practice today?” He thrust his face into Ronald’s armpit.

Ronald shouted an unhappy ticklish laugh. “No! Get off me, you nutter.”

“Oi, don’t shove me on the stairs. I’ve got a firm hold of you and I won’t fall down alone.”

They managed to climb the stairs safely and were on the fifth floor, making for the quietest, emptiest reaches of the castle.

“So Parkinson is the volunteer,” Ronald confirmed again.

“Yes. And I recommend you get on a first-name basis with her as soon as possible,” Draco said.

Ronald ruffled the hair at the nape of his own neck. “And why did she agree to this? She’s your ex, so I always assumed it made her off-limits for me.”

“Don’t be silly,” Draco replied. “I’m not attached to her like that anymore. And this isn’t a romance, it’s an experiment. Think, Ronald. Pansy is the only person it makes any sense for us to ask. I’ve snogged her myself and know she can deliver a -- how did you put it -- a kiss that connects, overwhelms, or what have you. So if you don’t find what you’re looking for in her, we’ll know it’s not because she's lacking anything.”

“Right. It’ll all be down to cursed me.”

“Or it will be some faulty synergy between the two of you.”

“How will we know which one?”

“WE? I reckon YOU will just know.”

Ronald knew his brother well enough to know that the more nervous Draco was, the bossier he became. “Why are you so tense about this?”

Draco stopped his purposeful stomping down the corridor. “Just -- be nice to her, Ronald. I know Pansy is going to act tough and like she’s not bothered by the very, very casual tone of all of this but -- well, she’s one of my oldest friends. I don’t want to ruin that over this experiment.”

Ronald was sighing. “You’re telling me to not be an F-boy.”

Draco frowned. “A wot?”

“You’re warning me to be a gentleman,” he said, louder.

Draco nodded. “Yes, and more than that. Be kind -- sweet, if you can manage it.”

Ronald was nodding. “Yes. Yes, I’ll do my best.”

Draco passed the last visible door in the corridor and kept walking. “There’s a false wall, here at the end,” he explained, muttering an opening spell, snagging Ronald’s arm and stepping through the wall into a disused room. It was large enough to be a classroom but completely empty of any desks or chairs. Sitting on the room’s lone table, in the centre of the floor, swinging her feet, was Pansy Parkinson.

“Hello, Malfoys,” she said, not getting up.

“Pansy, thank you for meeting us,” Draco said, unsure of how to stop sounding so strained and formal.

“Hiya,” Ronald said. He’d never looked too closely at Pansy before, dismissing her as an irretrievable part of Draco’s dating history. She looked like a delicate little bird, perched on the edge of the table, slim legs dangling toward the floor but not quite touching it. Her hair was dark and glossy, and looked as if it would be smooth if he were to pet her like a cat.

Animal metaphors -- stop it, Malfoy, she’s a real girl.

Draco cleared his throat. “So, anyways, for today -- “

“We don’t need a coach, Draco,” Pansy said, her eyes locked on Ronald even as she spoke to his brother. 

Draco looked between the two people he’d brought here, the edge of panic he had tread all the way up here growing thinner and thinner. But what he said was, “Right. I’ll leave you to it.”

“Wait outside,” Ronald said just as Draco was reaching for the door now visible on their side of the room. “We’ll feel safer if we know someone’s keeping watch. So no one comes barging in.”

He agreed, shutting the door behind himself. 

They were alone.

Ronald began. “Yeah, thanks for your help -- with -- this.”

Pansy waved a hand. “Don’t mention it. Really. It makes you sound like you’re groveling, and that’s not what I like about you.”

Ronald swallowed. “You already know what you like about me?”

She tilted her head. “I know enough. And I know you’re going to have to come closer than that.” She beckoned to him, calling him across the room. By the time he reached her table, she had slid off of it. “Take a seat here,” she said. “You sit and I’ll stand. It will correct our height difference.”

Ronald hummed. “That’s important?”

“Of course it is. Otherwise I’ll end up with a pain in the neck and light-headed from constricting my airway. Trust me,” she said, preemptively kneading her neck with one hand, twisting it in a way that bared it to him.

He cleared his throat. “None of the girls I’ve kissed before has been anywhere near as tall as me. Why did they never mention it?”

Pansy raised her dark, fine eyebrows. “Why did it never occur to you?”

He shrugged and settled in to sit on the table. “Because I’m an F-boy. I lack connection with the people I kiss, don’t I? That’s what you’re going to help me figure out, isn’t it?”

She nodded but didn’t approach him -- not yet. “Look at me,” she said.

He breathed out a laugh. “Done.”

“At my face, Malfoy. Look at me as if you like me.”

He took a deep, bracing breath as he looked into her eyes across the space between them.

“It’s only as awkward as you make it,” she said.

He shrugged. “Sorry. Is there, like, a big bushy wig you could wear, or something? I mean -- you’re not a thing like her.”

Pansy’s posture stiffened. “Her? Granger?”

Ronald wasn’t sure why he was seized with a sense of doom, or why it wasn’t enough to get him to stop talking immediately. “Well, yeah. This is the trial, the experiment but not the main event, right?”

Pansy scoffed, folding her arms over her chest. “Look, I agreed to help you FOR Granger but not AS Granger. The only thing I can teach you here is how to connect to ME so you can apply those -- what would we call them -- skills to other people. I’m not here as HER.”

“Well, yeah,” he said again. “That’s what I meant, of course. You’re Pansy Parkinson. I know that. And,” he pushed himself off the edge of the table, pacing toward her, “and I’m honored to learn whatever you’re kind enough to teach me.”

The moment he pushed himself away from the table he became the notoriously seductive Ronald Malfoy, confident and tall, rich and spoiled. Somehow, the balance of power in the room had shifted from Pansy to this towering, terribly attractive boy closing in on her the way she'd seen him do with other girls, as she watched him in the grass by the lake, on the sidelines of quidditch matches, on the glittering dancefloor at the Yule Ball, when she'd stood pining silently for him. 

The object of his attention was now her. It was her whose blood was racing, her fighting to stand still as he advanced, to keep him from seeing her stance wavering, crumbling into a long-held desire for him. Ronald Malfoy, her crush for half a year now, close enough to touch, to bury her face in his robes...

Get it together, Parkinson.

She raised her fingertips to his chest to hold him back. “For tonight,” she began in a clear, ringing voice, “we work on addressing the misunderstanding you seem to have that I’m a Granger stand-in -- a random female body for your use. That is dead wrong. And it means you don’t come any closer. You go back to your table and you look at me, face to face, no touching for three full minutes.”

He laughed. “You’re not random. I know who you are. And right now YOU are the one who is touching ME.”

She snatched her fingers away. “You may be able to identify me, but you haven’t connected with me yet,” she said, turning him around with both her hands, pushing him back to the table.

“Are you sure I haven't, Parkinson? You look a little flushed -- “

“Shut up, Malfoy. Sit down. This is going to take time.”

He obeyed, smirking.

“Now shut up and look at me.”

\---------------------

Asking Draco to stay to keep watch had turned out to be an excellent idea. He sat down on the floor outside the hidden room, on the edge of the illusion that obscured the entrance. He took a block from his pocket, tapped it with his wand and it expanded into his copy of a textbook -- transfiguration, of course -- one of the few texts he was expected to read outside of class rather than during it.

“This school is ridiculous,” he muttered to himself as he settled in to read.

He didn’t stir when he heard footsteps coming along the corridor. It was still before curfew and even if it wasn’t, he was a prefect, someone the school should trust to roam about without causing trouble.

He held his ground, not looking up from his book even as a pair of feet in shiny black school loafers and white knee-high socks stopped in front of him. 

“Draco Malfoy,” said a voice above the feet.

He looked up now. “Granger.” He forced himself not to glance over his shoulder, at the false wall keeping Ronald and Pansy barely out of view doing who knows what by now.

“Library not up to your standards?” Granger snarked.

“I’ve done nothing wrong, Granger. Move along,” he said into his book. Boring, Malfoy. Stay boring and she’ll be gone before Ronald comes staggering out of the room all kissed up by another girl.

But she was crouching in front of him, well aware of how to fold up her legs while keeping her skirt tucked primly in place. “You're not on duty tonight, and it will be curfew in five minutes. Maybe you’d better head back to the dungeons so you aren’t late.”

He snapped his book shut, smirking. “Spare me the motherly concern, Granger. It doesn’t work on all of us.”

She sat back, affronted. “Motherly?”

He shouldn’t have done it. He should have thanked her, assured her he’d make curfew, tipped his book, and sent her on her way, not attracting any further attention to himself or to Ronald.

Instead he said, "Look, I know you and Ronald have some Oedipal role playing scenario going on. It's a bit sick, but I respect it. Our mother doesn't nag, you see. And while it appears to have left Ronald unsatisfied and trawling about for more mother figures, I'm quite content with just the mother I have at home, thank you."

Her mouth had fallen open, gawking at his awfulness. "Oedipal? Ronald? And me? How do you even know about Sigmund Freud?"

Draco chuckled a smug profanity. "The unsavoury Austrian doctor? You're not the only one at school who reads, Granger. Hasn't Ronald told you about the legendary library at Malfoy Manor?" If Draco had been trying to romance Granger, bragging up the family library would have been his first move. Ronald could be so thick…

Ronald -- he had to get Granger to leave this corridor.

But she wasn't leaving. She was pushing the sleeves of her robes above her elbows, as if she was just getting started. 

"So," she began in a high chirp. "How is dogging Harry's steps coming along? Caught him up to anything yet?"

She was fishing for him to admit the comment on the train had meant nothing, or to admit his father had put him up to it.

He refused to do either, and the pair of them sat on the floor, looking hard into each other's faces, just as Ronald and Pansy were doing on the opposite side of the hidden door. The emotional engines behind it were different but the process was the same, a connection made eye to eye, breaking through the shyness of being close and seeing each other so plainly. Hermione's eyes were brown -- he remembered that from the train -- and her mouth had lost that toothy prominence it used to have before she got in the way of that hex Draco had meant for Potter last year.

His face broke into laughter at the memory of it, of Snape's deadpan refusal to acknowledge that anything had happened.

"What?" she demanded.

"Nothing," he answered, well aware she'd know he was laughing at her -- at something real or remembered in her face.

She narrowed her eyes, smiling dangerously. "Tell me something, Malfoy. You and Ronald aren't related by blood. Why does he have a nose exactly like yours rather than like the ones Fred and George Weasley have?”

Draco scoffed. She was trying to get him to admit that pureblood wizarding families were so inbred it was nothing for their members to share traits. There was no way he would play into that. She didn’t deserve to hear him outline the complicated cousin connection between his mother’s Black family and Ronald’s birth mother’s Prewetts. At least, she didn’t deserve to hear it from him. He sneered and said, "Why don't you ask Ronald, since you're so close?"

She shrugged. "Because I hadn't noticed it until just now. That nose -- it’s a bit long and very pointy. Must stab girls' eyes out with it when you try to kiss them. Or maybe they just wish you would, the poor things."

He reflected back a smile far more practiced at danger than her own. "Thinking about kissing me, are you Granger?"

The clock downstairs was signalling curfew. Without a word, without a glance back at the hidden door, Draco was on his feet. "That's time," he said. "Hadn't you better show me out?"

Hermione was getting to her feet, supervising his retreat toward the staircase, her back barely turned just as Ronald was emerging, on tiptoe from the hidden room with Pansy Parkinson. 

Disaster averted.


	4. Four

"Thinking about kissing me, are you Granger?"

That was what Draco Malfoy, that vain, egotistical, impossible boy said to Hermione Granger just before the clock struck and he stood up to leave with some excuse about curfew.

"I certainly was not," Hermione said, scrambling to her feet. "Clearly, I was saying how unpleasant the thought of -- "

"Ah, but you admit to having the thought. What's that my brother says? Can't do it until you can dream it." He was laughing at her as he re-shrunk his transfiguration textbook back to pocket size.

"That isn't truth, it's a stupid sports slogan," she said, trotting down the corridor as fast as she could without giving him the satisfaction of seeing her actually running away from him.

Draco kept pace with her easily, moving ahead, smirking over his shoulder. "Sports, kissing -- it's all the same to some people." 

"Well it's not to me, you -- you -- " She had never wanted to call someone an F-boy so desperately in all her life. And not F as in ferret. And not by spelling the right F word out, or making it a guessing game as she had done with Ronald on the train. She wanted to grab the front of Draco Malfoy’s robes, pull his pointy nose level with hers, and scream the word fully formed and perfectly articulated into his face. 

But this was something else she couldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing. She was in control of herself, always. She may not know much about the Malfoy family’s ridiculous pure blood manners, but she was not some foul-mouthed, gobby cow either. 

They each turned sharply as they reached the staircase, parting ways without a farewell as they went to their dormitories. Draco knew to pause, watching her stomp away as he waited for Ronald and Pansy, hoping they'd had success of their own, though different than the success he'd had with Granger. 

Yes, their exchange was a success. He'd really gotten to Granger tonight. By the time they’d got to the end of the corridor, she looked almost ready to hit him, and all for mentioning the most outlandish of possibilities, that of the pair of them ever kissing. It was unthinkable, even though, at the moment, in his mind, the very act of dismissing the idea meant he first had to think of it. 

She had good teeth now, thank you very much, and her skin...

"Why're you way over here?" It was Ronald, jogging down the corridor, Pansy well behind him. "Was that Hermione just now?"

Draco told him quickly about the near miss they'd had with Hermione and the hidden door before asking Ronald how the experiment with Pansy had unfolded.

"It's early days, early days," Ronald whispered. "She wouldn't let me do anything more than look at her tonight."

Draco was nodding. "Yes, and, how was that?"

Ronald grinned rather foolishly. "Not at all unpleasant."

"Oi, you two had better not be talking about me," Pansy called out.

"Quiet down, Parkinson, or we'll be caught out here past curfew," Ronald said.

"What did you call me?" she demanded.

"Pansy," Ronald corrected himself. "I'll SEE you later, Pansy."

"Yes, I'll LOOK forward to it," she answered.

Draco gagged. "Oh, for stars' sake, you two. Goodnight." 

He tugged on Pansy's sleeve, leading her away, to their dungeon. "So what do you think?" Draco asked when they couldn't hear Ronald's footsteps anymore. "Do you think he seems damaged by a backfiring love potion from before he was born?"

Pansy hummed. "Well, he seems fully capable of feeling attraction. Made some truly riveting eyes at me in there."

Draco snorted. "Yeah? Congratulations."

She tossed her hair. "Thank you. But as for the rest of it -- the connection he's after," she smiled archly at Draco, "Getting to the bottom of that will take much more intensive research."

\--------------

Molly Weasley usually came back to the old Prewett estate at the height of springtime. First, she'd meet her Aunt Muriel at the house, and together they'd walk the path through the little birch wood lit with sunshine suffusing through new green leaves, the air fragrant with blossoms and pollens as the plants called to each other. And then, at the end of their walk, they’d be in the ancient family cemetery where Molly’s parents were buried, along with her brothers, Fabian and Gideon Prewett. They were laid to rest here, young and without heirs, killed during the war, not quite a year before her sixth child, her lost Ronald, was born.

This year, with all the tumult at the Triwizard Tournament and the relaunching of the Order of the Phoenix, Molly was making her visit late in the autumn, when the leaves of the birch trees swirled brown around her feet and the air was musty with decay. It made for a much more dismal walk, especially since old Muriel was poorly this afternoon and hadn’t come along. 

On her lonely walk, Molly carried two bouquets of asters clutched in one hand. She glanced over her shoulders as she went. Constant vigilance -- that’s what they told each other now, though she knew this private cemetery to be a deserted place -- even desolate. All the vegetation save the trees had been razed to the ground when Old Uncle Ignatius had burned the estate’s fields during the last year he managed the property, the year Fabian and Gideon died. Some of the old tombstones still bore scorch marks from the fire. It was a rash act which most everyone took as a sign that he was succumbing to dementia after the loss of his nephews.

Molly knew better.

She let herself through the low, iron cemetery gate and walked past her ancestors, nodding, speaking some of their names aloud. At her brothers’ grave, she laid the flowers on the long, yellowed grass and closed her eyes to pay her respects.

A twig snapped in the trees beyond the fence. Her eyes flew open, her wand drawn. 

“Who’s there!”

She had meant to use her mother-voice, strong, commanding, and completely sure of herself. Instead, she sounded like herself as a little girl, on the verge of tears of fright.

Besides Muriel, Molly had only ever met one person here in the cemetery. If he had known, somehow, to come again, to come today -- oh, and after the way he’d been carrying on at the Hogwarts alumni banquet last month, under the influence of only a little alcohol -- stars help her, what would happen if he appeared here now?

There was more snapping and rustling from the undergrowth, and whispering. “She’s terrified, mate. We have to let her know it’s only us.”

“What? She’ll give us a proper walloping if she finds us here, skiving off.”

“Look at the size of you now. How can you still be afraid of her wallopings?”

“It’s childhood trauma. No one ever recovers from that.”

She dropped her wand. “George and Fredericton Weasley, show yourselves at once.”

Molly’s twins came slumping out of the trees, stepping easily over the cemetery fence, each of them carrying a bulging burlap sac. Those blasted Apparation licenses. They hand them out far too young. She took a wide stance and commenced questioning. “What on earth do you think you’re doing, out of school skulking around in Aunt Muriel’s wood?”

“Potions homework,” Fred beamed.

George took it up immediately. “Too right. We’re harvesting a few rare ingredients known to grow hardly anywhere in Britain besides our old family lands.”

“Yes, we’d gladly sell our birthrights for a mess of extra potions credits during our NEWT year,” Fred finished.

Molly scowled. “Severus Snape is now so lax in quality control he sends students into the wilds for ingredients instead of using the stores produced in the Hogwarts greenhouses? This is what the pair of you expect me to believe, is it?”

George forced a laugh. “No, no. Snape didn’t send us. It was Sprout.”

“Yeah, Professor Sprout,” Fred insisted.

But she was waving their stories away like a bad smell. “What is in the bags, boys? Empty them out. Right here.”

The twins gawked at each other, motionless.

Molly was using her wand to point now. “I said, right here.”

Crestfallen, the twins dumped the contents of the sacs onto their great Aunt Lucretia’s grave. 

“You see, Mum. Just some pulpy old rootstock no one else would want,” Fred said.

“Yeah, but we might be able to make it into something fun to sell in our shop,” George added, even as Fred elbowed him hard in the ribs.

Molly crept closer to the pile of foraged roots, lying tangled and muddy at her feet. She was still pointing with her wand, gripping it in a hand that was now shaking. She pushed a root with just the tip of her wand. “Milletus,” she said. “You’re foraging for Milletus.”

George and Fred cringed in unison. “You know it?”

Molly straightened up. “Of course I do. And I know what it’s good for as well.” She flourished her wand in a full circle around her head, red light and flame exploding from her wand, incinerating the twins' afternoon of hard labour digging deep into the mud, where the land was well-recovered from Uncle Ignatius’s fires.

The boys howled. 

Fred recovered first. “Mum, you’ve just torched hundreds of galleons worth of rare, premium love potion substrate!”

“I know what I’ve done,” she called over their voices. “And don’t you ever set foot in these woods again.”

\---------------

Harry Potter was pacing, florid with rage in front of the fire in the Gryffindor common room. “This whole year of school -- it’s pointless. Tedious tasks and power struggles. If it was a book I’d skip whole chapters of it and not even be sorry.”

Ronald yawned. “I know, mate. But tone it down. You’re going off like Draco.”

The comparison wrenched a growl out of him. “I’ve got detention so much I haven’t played a lick of quidditch. I constantly reek of murtlap. Hagrid still hasn’t turned up. Dumbledore is never around either. It’s like we’re a bunch of naughty brats locked up at home with the worst babysitter ever, doing nothing.”

Hermione looked up from her ancient runes. “Ronald, your father is on the board of governors. Can’t he do anything about Umbridge?”

He shrugged. “It’s not the governors’ doing. It’s the minister who sent her here. And as for advice from Dad,” he paused, swallowing hard, “I’m probably not supposed to tell you.”

Harry and Hermione said nothing, waiting. It wouldn’t be long.

“Alright, but don’t tell anyone else,” he said. “Dad said to stay out of her way. He told Draco she’s very powerfully connected at the ministry -- more powerfully connected than the minister himself.”

Harry blinked. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” said Hermione, “that the minister isn’t truly in charge of the ministry anymore. There’s someone higher up.”

Harry stopped pacing, falling into a seat and staring into the fire. “It’s him. It’s Voldemort. This confirms it. He’s already taken over the ministry right under everyone else’s noses.”

Ronald groaned. “I was afraid that was what it meant.” He dropped his head into his hands. “Come on, Dad…”

Hermione closed her textbook. “This is why all the students need to stop fighting among ourselves. Umbridge has been sent here to suppress us and to divide us so we can’t fight back. And, of course, to neutralize Harry...”

“Well, she sure hasn’t done that. We need to alert the Order, tonight,” Harry said. “We need to talk to Sirius.”

Ronald and Hermione both flinched. “Harry, you’ve been reading the paper,” Hermione said. “You heard what Draco said about ‘dogging’ your steps. They’re closing in on Sirius. He needs to stay safely hidden for now. We’ll try someone else instead.”

“Who, like Snape?” Harry spat.

“He’s the closest, but if you really can’t trust him, we can try -- oh, I don’t know -- maybe Ronald’s birth parents,” she suggested.

Ronald squirmed in his seat. “They won’t do anything that would blow Arthur’s cover in the ministry. They’re useless for anything else right now.”

Harry got to his knees on the hearth. “I’m calling Sirius.”

“Harry, no. Umbridge will be watching the fires in all the common rooms,” Hermione said, standing up. “But there might be one she's missed.”

Harry sat back. “How? Where?”

She sighed. “Five years on and still neither of you have read “Hogwarts: A History.” Nevermind. On the fifth floor, there was a room where some unauthorized rites went on, hundreds of years ago, raising a cry among the public which the school’s thirtieth headmaster put down by vanishing the room completely.”

Ronald elbowed Harry. “Public outcry -- the rites must have been something sexy.”

“As I was saying,” Hermione went on. “As part of an enchanted castle like this, the room re-asserted itself eventually, and it exists now but in a hidden form. And it should be exactly as it was when it was vanished which would mean it has a fireplace -- a hidden fireplace.”

Ronald was blinking now. Obviously she meant the room he was using to experiment with Pansy Parkinson. He couldn’t remember seeing a fireplace there, but that wasn’t the kind of thing that had been catching his eye in the room. Not at all.

Harry sighed, turning back to the fire before them. “Sounds like a long shot.”

“Harry Potter, don’t you touch the fire in this room. If you’re that impatient, I’ll go to the fifth floor and see about that hidden fireplace right now.” She was pulling on her robes. “You sit,” she said, pushing Harry into an armchair. “Umbridge is just gagging for an excuse to catch you breaking a rule. Don't step into it.”

“Right, I’m coming then,” Ronald said.

“No, you have a charms essay to finish,” she said. “I didn’t spend half the night proofreading your rough draft just so you could leave it undone. Both of you sit. I won’t be long.”

“You want my cloak?” Harry offered.

She tossed her head. “No, I have nothing to hide.”

Ronald pulled his essay into his lap. “Watch yourself, Hermione. It’s the Slytherin sixth year prefects on duty tonight. You won’t find soft little Draco out there willing to cut you a break. It’ll be that great hairy Montague instead.”

As she ducked into the portrait hole, she heard Harry say to Ronald, “Honestly, it’s like you have no idea how your brother behaves toward other people.”

“What? He’s not that hard to manage. One good punch to the stomach and he always calms right down for me…”

\---------------------

Draco Malfoy was annoyed. He had been called into service as a prefect on what was supposed to be his night to stay in finishing a charms essay. He had argued but they said it was an emergency. Umbridge had secretly set an alarm on the Gryffindor portrait hole to alert her when anyone had sneaked out after curfew. It had sounded just minutes before, and Umbridge had ordered Montague to get all Slytherin prefect hands on deck, hoping the sneaky Gryffindor would be Harry Potter himself. No matter who it was, Montague had told his prefects in a loud voice on the fifth floor landing, there would be no mercy tonight.

Maybe, Draco thought to himself as Montague sent them off hunting Gryffindors, someone had forgotten that the Slytherin prefects included the brother of Harry Potter’s best mate. He had already decided that if he caught Ronald, he’d let him go. But if it was anyone else -- Potter, Granger, those Weasley twins, even that harmless Longbottom -- he’d do as his father asked and serve Umbridge by handing them over.

He was rounding a corner, nodding at his own good sense and firm resolve when someone came running at him, their face colliding with his chest with a thud and a little cry. The impact set Draco back slightly, but the other person was positively reeling from it, clawing at his arms to keep from falling. When they gained their footing, they looked up into Draco’s face in the dim light of the corridor.

It was Granger. He was looking into her face again, as he had done the day he was guarding the door during Ronald and Pansy’s first lesson. She was recognizing him, her startled expression twisting into one of terror. 

By the time she had overheard Montague’s speech about not showing the Gryffindors any mercy, she was already exposed, and now she was caught. As she tried to jerk her arms out of Draco’s grip, he held her, keeping her in front of him.

“You let me go, Draco Malfoy,” she hissed at him. “This is a trap and it’s not fair.”

He scoffed. “Nothing’s fair at this school anymore, Granger.”

She wouldn't accept it, straining against him. “If they take me to Umbridge, she’ll torture me with one of those cursed quills, and then you’ll have to answer to your brother for it. Don’t think he won’t find out.” She hadn’t stopped twisting between his fingers, his hands encircling her wrists like shackles.

She was right. She wasn’t just any student roaming out of bounds after hours. She was not just one of Harry Potter’s hapless mates. She was Umbridge’s particular enemy, a girl who humiliated the old toad in class, over and over again. If Montague found her, this small infraction would warrant severe punishment. She'd be hurt, possibly scarred. Ronald would be furious with him if he didn’t help. And more than that, Draco would be ashamed of himself for letting Umbridge have the satisfaction of catching Granger in a rare miscalculated risk. 

It wasn’t fair, but maybe it could be. Here was Hermione Granger, right under his pointy nose, not mothering him, still smart and strong, but in need of rescue, like a real, feeling person.

“Right,” he said, tugging at her arm, heading for the hidden door at the end of the corridor. “They won’t find you here.”

They stumbled over each other as they broke through the false wall, coming into the room where Ronald and Pansy’s table stood askew in the centre of the floor. She yanked her hands free, and he wiped his sweating palms on his trouser legs. 

“This is it. This is the vanished room,” she said.

He hushed her. In the quiet, they could hear the voices that had been following her getting louder. It was Montague coming along with more of Draco’s fellow prefects, their footfalls landing hard on the stone floor of the corridor, closer and closer to the hidden door.

“Someone’s just run in there.”

‘What? Through that wall?”

“It’s not a wall,” Montague snapped. “Filch warned us about these kinds of things. It must be a door. And if it is Potter who’s just gone through it, he’ll have hell to pay once we get him cornered.”

A stare of alarm passed between Draco and Hermione as they stood between the twin moonbeams the windows were streaming onto the floor. Draco scanned her from head to toe. Even with two of them working at it, there was no time to cast a full-body Disillusionment spell over her before the voices arrived. In a room like this, stripped of every bit of furniture but one of its tables, there was nowhere to hide her. And now the handle visible only from their side of the room was rattling and shaking in the wall.

“What’s blocking it?” Montague shouted. “Get back, I know the opening spell. Aloho -- “

It happened quickly, mutually, as if they both understood at once the only chance they had to hide her. Maybe the fact that they'd both pictured it in their minds already helped them move through it seamlessly, wordlessly. Draco turned his back to the room’s entrance. She took him by the tie, towing him along with her as she walked backward until she felt the wall against her spine. As she moved he flipped the hood of her robe up and over her distinctive hair, and she plunged her fingers into his. Her face was hidden from sight by his head, her jaw tilted, assuming a position which would make it appear from across the room like she was kissing him beneath her hood. 

Her pursuers would force their way into the room just to find another slick Malfoy brother snog session.

They came through the door, Montague’s spell breaking through with a crash. It was abrupt, loud, shocking in spite of the moments they’d had to prepare for it. Hermione jumped. Draco had closed his arms around her by then, and it felt to him as if she might be about to break, to dart out of the safety of their cover like a skittish animal. His impulse was to hold her more tightly, more thoroughly, and he acted on it. Already in position, he tipped forward ever so slightly and pressed his mouth to hers.

Her lips were hot from running through the corridors, already slightly open as she tried to catch her breath. No chance of that now. She was gasping at the touch of his mouth on hers. The sound was tiny, somehow ecstatic, and without a thought he reached for it, pressing more firmly, more deeply. 

He had meant to hold quite still, to move just enough for Montague to accept their ruse. But Draco Malfoy was no longer only pretending to kiss Hermione Granger. He was working at her mouth as passionately as he’d ever kissed anyone before -- perhaps more. His heart had already been pounding from the danger they were in, and it was racing madly now as he took her bottom lip, his top lip fitting between hers as she opened to him with another murmured sigh, and he filled every one of her gasps with himself. Her hands were still in his hair, but her fingers were now curved, pressed hard against his scalp as she tipped her head, stretching upward, holding onto him.

“Oi, who’s that? Is that you there, Draco?”

He pulled away with the click of a wet seal breaking and he turned his unmistakable profile to his house mates. “Who else would it be?” he snarled. “Now shove off and give us some privacy.”

He turned back to her, her breath fast and heavy on his face as he kissed her cheekbone, gently, slowly stamping a path toward her mouth as he waited to be questioned further. He left his eyes open, noting her face, expecting to find her wide-eyed and maybe furious, but her eyes were closed, as if she’d sent her mind somewhere else, away from all of this.

Made sense.

“Right, Malfoy,” Montague was saying. “At least show us who you’ve got there.”

“No, I will not,” Draco said, pulling slightly away again. “What don’t you understand about the concept of privacy, Montague? Be a gentleman and get lost.” 

He punctuated his command by falling on Hermione’s mouth again. She responded more quickly this time, her clearly feminine, clearly not Harry Potter's hands and wrists crossed at the nape of Draco's neck, dragging him down, closer. Draco staggered, bracing himself against the wall with one forearm.

Montague's companion gave a low whistle as Montague coughed. “Right then.”

Their footsteps were moving away, some of them with nervous haste, others slow with curiosity. Hermione kept her hold on Draco, with her hands and her mouth, until the voices, the chortling of the Slytherin prefects, faded back into silence.

It was Draco who broke away first, his lips dark and full, his brow furrowed. “You alright?” he asked her.

Hermione nodded, dropping her heels to come down off her tiptoes, breathing out the word, “Yeah.” She uncrossed her arms, letting them sink to her sides, laughing softly. “Yeah, no torture for me tonight.” 

She dipped her head as soon as she said it, as if she’d embarrassed herself by admitting kissing him was preferable to being turned over to Umbridge to slice her own hand open for hours on end.

He smirked, wiping his thumb along her chin, clearing away the glistening dampness barely below her bottom lip. “A compliment indeed. But I’ve gone and left you all soggy,” he said. “Sorry about -- all that. No point stopping with half measures though, after we committed so much to our little act. Isn’t that right?”

She shrugged, lowering her hood but not trusting herself to say too much yet. 

It worried him, his smirk now a frown. “That wasn’t your first, was it?”

She raised both her hands, shaking her head. “No. No, it wasn’t.”

He pressed his hand to his sternum, relieved.

“Why?” she said. “Was it -- a mess? Did it feel like a first one?”

He was waving his hands now. “No, not at all. It was,” he stopped, choking faintly, “it was nice.”

“Nice,” she repeated, her voice flat.

“Not -- not bad nice,” he rushed. “Good nice. I mean -- how was my nose? Did it injure you?“

Tremendously grateful for the joke, she let out a nervous laugh. "I survived it."

"Not funny, Granger," he said, smiling anyway. "Did my nose bother you, up that close?"

"It bothers me at any distance," she laughed again.

"Well, no one else has ever mentioned -- "

"It worked, alright,” she interrupted him. “Your awful Slytherin mates left me alone. I'm safe from Umbridge and that’s what matters.”

He stood back, out of her space. “It’s not all that matters, actually.” He looked pained. “I don’t suppose you would but -- I have to be sure. I have to ask that you not tell Ronald that I -- helped you here tonight.”

“No, of course I wouldn’t,” she said, blushing all over again at the thought of telling anyone at all about what they’d just done. “These were extenuating circumstances. There's no need to ever revisit them in any way."

“Right.” He was standing in the window’s moonbeam now, nodding at his shoes.

She flourished her wand and began winding a Disillusionment spell from her feet to her head. "I'll be off then."

There was no reason for him to stay until she was finished, especially not when she was signalling he should go. He heaved a sigh and strode towards the exit.

“Draco,” she said, and he braced himself for a cutting blow, an insult or threat, something normal between them. But what she said was, “Thanks. This room was exactly what I was looking for.”


	5. Five

Hermione desperately needed to talk to her girl friends. Unfortunately, she didn’t really have any -- none she could trust to help her talk through the mess she was in now, as she made her way back from the vanished fifth floor room well after curfew, her hands smelling of Draco Malfoy’s hair.

She raised her fingertips to her nose, sniffing his scent from them before trailing them over her lips. Draco Malfoy -- where in the world did he learn to -- and like that -- with her -- and who would dare to call what she’d done with Viktor Krum by the same name as what had happened between herself and Draco just now? It would never happen again. That was for certain. But she was changed. She was post-Malfoy-kiss-Granger, and what was she supposed to do with herself now?

Cloaked by a Disillusionment spell, she arrived safely at the Gryffindor Tower as the Slytherin prefects Umbridge had deployed to chase her scurried through the corridors and staircases. Inside the portrait hole, Ronald appeared as quickly as if he’d been standing there waiting all along.

“You’re back,” he said, pulling her into a crushing hug. He was babbling over her head. “I had the most terrible feeling after you left. I never should have let you go without me, all because of a stupid charms essay, no matter what you said.”

She spoke, too muffled against the front of his jumper for anyone to hear.

“What?” he asked, loosening his grip enough for her to turn her head.

“I said, did you finish your essay or not? This touching show of concern had better not be an excuse -- “

“Yes, I finished it,” he said, releasing her completely.

Harry was on his feet too, standing as if to separate them. “Did you find it? The vanished fireplace?”

“Yes, it’s there, in the room, as expected. But we can’t go tonight, Harry.” She explained about Umbridge’s new alarm on the portrait hole and the swarm of Slytherin prefects out hunting Gryffindors, hoping to find him.

“I said you should have taken my cloak, didn’t I?” Harry answered.

She winced. “Yes, you were right. But even so, when we go back to the room, it should be well before curfew. There’s too much at stake if we’re found talking to Sirius. And they nearly caught me just now.”

Ronald cracked his knuckles. “Draco better not have been involved. He must have been sent out with the rest of them.”

Hermione grabbed his hands, prying Ronald's fingers out of fists. “Don’t bother Draco about it. He was patrolling with them but he -- he actually helped me get away.”

Ronald raised his eyebrows. “Yeah?”

Her cheeks were tingling, and she knew she must be blushing. “Yes. He -- he distracted that Montague beast.”

Ronald nodded, looking slightly impressed.

“Don’t mention it to him,” she hurried to add. “You know how proud he is. Don’t embarrass him by letting on you know he’s gone easy on me.”

“But I live to embarrass him -- ”

“Excuse me,” Harry was nearly shouting. “How did a mission to contact the Order turn into a discussion of Draco’s delicate ego?”

“Tomorrow, Harry,” Hermione repeated. “We can’t do anything more about it until morning. For now, let’s all try to get some sleep.” 

That was what she said, though she was already raising her fingers to her nose again, knowing it would be hours before she’d be able to sleep.

\-----------------------

If she was still a Hogwarts student, Molly Weasley would have been out past curfew herself. But with Arthur taking his turn guarding that blasted door at the Ministry for the Order all night there was no one to go home to at the Burrow. She stayed with her Aunt Muriel on the Prewett estate, tidying the house, cooking, keeping Muriel company. 

Molly was home now, standing inside the kitchen door of the Burrow. For any other member of her family, finding the house so quiet, so empty would be strange. For Molly though, nothing could be more ordinary. Her three oldest sons were grown men. The younger children had been away at school for years. Ronald was lost. Even Arthur, who had always spent his days at work, now served these night shifts, the heroic dear.

Maybe she needed a pet. For decades she had joked that babies were her familiars, making replacing the little carrier pigeon she had while at school unnecessary. Sweet, cooing Ondine -- there was no other pet like her. This was the thought she took with her up the stairs, to her bedroom, the first one Arthur had built, when it had been just the two of them.

Yes, Molly, think of dear little animal companions, think of early days with Arthur, the short honeymoon interrupted by sweet baby Bill. Think of anything but the twins uprooting Milletus plants on Aunt Muriel’s land, anything but the visitor you were afraid of meeting there in the cemetery, for the first time since…

Here it was.

Molly fell sideways onto her creaking double bed as if she’d fainted away. But she was wide awake with all the memories, all the feelings of that awful time right after her brothers, Fabian and Gideon, were killed in the war. Her baby twins had just learned to walk and were havoc incarnate, relentless in their need for her care in spite of her mourning. She got so low Arthur took a short leave from the Ministry so she could sort herself out.

It was springtime, the weather whipping between perfection and wind and rainstorms. Whatever the weather, she had to escape the child-dominated pen of her house at least once a day. Arthur understood and was not offended. Though he did worry there might be something morbid and counterproductive about her spending hours each day at the Prewett’s private cemetery.

She sat in the wispy spring grass alongside her brothers’ newly dug graves, sniffing at the air, wondering when the Milletus would bloom, making the area unsafe. At the height of their pollen release, the Milletus on the Prewett land was strong enough, heavy enough in the air that it didn’t need to be brewed up to have a love potion’s effects. It didn’t affect Muggles, but for wizards and witches it was potent if merely inhaled. This was why it was extinct most everywhere, wiped out to prevent madness and chaos. Uncle Ignatius had an agreement with the Ministry to let some high quality Prewett Milletus grow in this secluded area as a special preserve. 

Everyone in the family knew to be careful.

As long as the wind kept up its brisk pace, there was no danger. But just in case, Molly decided, this would have to be her last visit to the cemetery until after the Milletus blossoms browned and fell harmlessly into the undergrowth.

Lucius Malfoy, however, did not know to be careful. 

He must not have known. 

What he did know was that he had slept hardly at all in two weeks, not since he came crashing into the cellar of his own house to find Antonin Dolohov and his goons blood-soaked and grinning over the bodies of the Prewett brothers. Molly had been told her brothers had been killed in Malfoy Manor. Whether anyone told her or not, she would have assumed that Lucius must have been complicit in it. 

She was alone in the world now, and left thinking it was his fault. This was what Lucius Malfoy believed he knew, and it was driving him mad. He didn’t dare face her, but if he left something on the Prewett brothers’ graves to show his sorrow, his dissent. From the depths of his old school trunk he retrieved the small brass telescope he used to carry with him when he would meet Molly Prewett in the Hogwarts astronomy tower for tutoring. A piece of twine bound a small pigeon’s feather to it. He kept the feather, closing it up in the trunk, and tucked the telescope into his pocket.

She jumped to her feet at the sound of his apparition in the cemetery. She moved quickly, worn out but as fit and lithe as she ever was from long days of chasing the twins.

Lucius managed to say her name before she could speak. “Molly, please...”

“How dare you show yourself in front of my face, and in all the places you could have chosen. The nerve of you, Lucius Abraxas Malfoy.” She was red-faced and reaching through her knitted layers, groping for her wand.

“Molly, no,” Lucius said, reaching her in a single stride, holding her arms at her sides as he encircled her with his own, pulling her back against his chest. “Listen to me.”

She hated herself for crying so easily, so noisily with great shuddering sobs. “No, I will not.”

“I ordered them not to. I told him ‘no,’” he spoke into her ear so she’d hear him over her own voice. “I kept them alive for days, arguing for an exchange of prisoners. I had nearly convinced the Dark Lord. But Dolohov -- he’s an animal, and he’s going about all of this all wrong. He does not have my support.”

“What did you think would happen?” Molly wailed over her shoulder. “Did you really think you could control them? Did you think there would be no animals in their midst, and that you could save anyone once the killing frenzy started?”

He bowed his forehead to her crown, her hat fallen to their feet. “I’m so sorry, Molly.”

“I know why you did this,” she shouted into the trees hemming in the cemetery. “You did this for power, Lucius. To keep your little cult of manners and land and money intact. And now you can see for yourself that you have no power at all.” She was breathless, weeping, held upright by Lucius’s strength alone. “You are a fool.”

He nodded against her head. “Yes. I am. I always have been.” He shook against her, as if he was crying himself.

For the moment, the imperious Lucius Malfoy she saw in the newspapers most every day was gone. The drawling, preening peacock with Narcissa Black on his arm was gone. In his place was the boy from school who had tutored her in astronomy even though they both knew she didn’t need it. He’d meet her in the tower, after dark. Sometimes Arthur would come with her and laze on the platform inside by himself, bored, snoring, as they bent over the outside railing together, their arms brushing, Lucius’s head lowered to follow the same eye-line as hers as they tracked the stars. 

Lucius had never made a decisive romantic move toward her. Of course he hadn’t. She was Arthur’s girl and he was promised to Narcissa, the little girl five years below them. It had seemed like such a vast, comical age difference at the time. 

The last day of school, after their astronomy NEWT was finished and there was no need anymore, they found each other in the tower at the usual time. Lucius had smiled so pleasantly and asked so very politely to hug her goodbye. She was surprised by the request. She’d hardly seen him all term. He’d been spending more and more time with those older men who’d been hanging around Hogsmeade talking about the very worst politics, recruiting followers. 

She’d hesitated, scanning the inside of the tower, as if she was waiting for Arthur to appear to chaperone. In his absence, Lucius held her close to him, much taller than her, not lanky like Arthur but massive and lean. He lifted her off the floor, his arms closed beneath hers, his chin on her shoulder. As he set her down, his rough cheek dragged through her hair, across her cheek. He stood her in front of himself and looked into her eyes, still so close. 

He paused, waited, his breath on her lips. And as she sensed his chin jutting forward, toward her, she tipped her own chin back.

He stopped, laughing softly. “Of course,” he said, brushing his nose against hers and letting her go.

It was one of the great mysteries of Molly Prewett Weasley’s life. What would have been different in the lives of so many people if her good girl, faithful instincts hadn’t made her recoil, and she had let Lucius Malfoy kiss her on the last day of school?

But no, that boy from the astronomy tower did not exist, not today. Lucius was here in the Prewett cemetery looking to assuage his guilt for his own reasons which could not possibly have anything to do with Fabian or Gideon themselves, and what they suffered in his house.

She sobbed again, and raised her foot to stomp on the top of his boot. He anticipated it and hopped out of her way, stumbling and falling to sit on the grass, her body twisting so she landed in his lap, looking up into his face. 

The fall startled Molly's sobbing into silence. The cemetery returned to its usual dead quiet. The wind had stopped. The air was still and fragrant, the Milletus pollen rising out of the ground and falling out of the windy currents that had held it aloft.

Molly recognized the smell at once, her heart lurching with a new horror. She scrambled to get out of his lap. “Lucius, you have to go. Now.”

He held her tighter. “Say you understand it wasn’t me who killed them.”

“Fine,” she said, clamping her hand over her nose and mouth. “Imagine I’ve said whatever you want. Just go.”

She felt her stomach lift and fall, like she’d flown a broom too fast over a sharp rise. It was starting. Desperate to stop it, she raised her free hand to cover Lucius’s nose and mouth as well. 

“Molly, what…?”

“For stars’ sake, stop talking, you’ll just take in more.”

She was drifting, verging on giddy as he stared at her, alarmed, confused, still holding onto her as her struggling turned to breathy half-hearted pleading with him to leave. “Go, Lucius. Please,” she said, even as she nestled her face into his chest.

As he watched her, the confusion in his eyes vanished. She pulled her face out of his robes just in time to see it pass. His fingers -- by the stars, those hands -- closed around her wrist, slid upward, covering her hand, pressing her palm against his barely open mouth.

After all this time, his mouth...stars help her.

The rest was a blur of potion induced, nostalgia enhanced, grief obliterating euphoria. Lucius Malfoy -- he was so vile and so perfect -- so ridiculous and potion addled as he threw her wand across the cemetery when she tried to cast a contraceptive spell, telling her to go on and get pregnant by him so he’d never truly leave her. She was enchanted enough at that moment to agree it was a better alternative to taking her hands off him to go retrieve the wand. She stayed with him, in a fantasy from her school days where her brothers were alive and she was no one’s mother, no one’s wife, just her own, and finally, his.

Why didn’t Narcissa rise to meet him like this? She did love him. He knew that. Why was Molly so much more? Was it just the potion? Had all the children perfected her. Was it the history between them -- the wait? Perfect as she was, she was soon tired. Eventually he saw it and it touched him deeply enough to force himself, even through the potioned air, to rein in his desire and let her sleep against his chest, under his cloak in the grass as he smoothed her hair and marveled at the sweetness of her. She was asleep but responding to him anyway, with sighs, tiny movements, caresses and kisses, the most peaceful and contented she’d ever been. In the haze of Milletus pollen, it felt real.

She hadn’t slept long when the rain started, falling from clouds high overhead, dissolving the pollen hanging in the air and knocking it into the dirt, harmless. Molly twitched against him, blinking away the water falling on her face, taking in deep breaths of rain-freshen air. She coughed, wide awake all at once, shocked, horrified at herself.

She swore. “Milletus,” was all she said, trying to summon her wand and her clothes. 

Lucius tucked his cloak around her, pulling the old brass telescope from its pocket. “Take it.”

She jerked her gaze away at the sight of it. “I won’t take anything from you.”

“I’m afraid it might be too late for that,” he said. “If you remember, at the height of this mania, we decided not to…”

Molly scoffed. “Decided, did we?” she was draping herself in her damp woolen clothing again as he sat only partially covered by his cloak, rain beading on his chest and back. 

“Get dressed,” she snapped at him. “I can’t bear the sight of you.” This was true. “And there’s no need to worry about -- leaving me with anything. The twins are still nursing at bedtime. It affects my hormones so I shouldn’t be able to…” Even if it should be impossible for her to fall pregnant, she couldn’t bring herself to say the words.

He nodded, letting out a deep breath. “Thank the stars.”

“No, thank my children,” she said. “Don’t think I haven’t heard the rumors about the roots of your master’s evil. If you did -- leave me with anything while under the influence of a love potion, they say it would be a monster incapable of love or compassion.”

“Molly, no,” he said. He was on his feet now, dressed only in his trousers, barefoot on the turf of her family cemetery. “It’s not that simple. A potion conception doesn’t have the dulling effect if there is real affection between the pair.”

“My point exactly,” she said, bending to extract her wand from a rosebush.

When she stood back up, Lucius was too close again. He was lifting her off the ground, holding her against the cold, wet, bare skin of his torso. This time, when he held her, face to face, he finished the kiss he’d started in the astronomy tower. He did it without a potion, sweetly and gently, sadly. It was the sadness that reached Molly’s grieving heart, and for an instant, she closed her eyes and accepted it.

“Whatever comes of it, don’t terminate it,” he whispered into her ear. “Believe me, Molly, if there is a baby, he is full of love.”

She huffed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “He’d still be a monster, no matter what you tell yourself, you vain, twisted thing. And that is because I do not care anything for you.” She said it with less force than she intended.

He smirked as he set her down on the ground. “Well, I suppose we’ll know in due time.”

Due time, she thought to herself as she lay in her bed in the empty quiet of the Burrow. She rolled onto her back and smoothed the dent worn into the springs by Arthur’s body. 

Had she told Arthur about the potion accident? Of course she had. She waited one day, until just after they had come together themselves, in this bed. She told him about everything except for the final un-potioned kiss goodbye. It was the completion of an old kiss, from before she married Arthur -- nothing that involved him.

Molly and Arthur wept together while their little children slept. He assured her it wasn’t her fault. She wasn't the first decent wife and mother to run into that kind of mishap. And if she was pregnant, the overwhelming odds were that the child was his, more of Arthur’s leggy ginger boys, and it would be raised as such, with the same love his brothers had known.

And then Arthur had gone to the Prewett estate, in a dressing gown and slippers, in the howling dark of the night, and he and Uncle Ignatius had burned the land where the Milletus grew to nothing but stubble. 

\--------------------------------

“So,” Pansy said, sitting down too close and too hard next to Draco on the bench at breakfast, making him drop his toast into his milk. “When do we meet with Ronald again? He needs his lessons.”

Draco groaned. “Can’t you carry on without me, Pansy?”

She raised one eyebrow. “Lost your nerve already, Malfoy?”

He shuddered. “I’ve just been thinking, the farther I stay out of my family member’s love lives, the better. And even a thick twit like Ronald will eventually figure out we’ve set up these lessons not so much to get him with Granger but to match him with you.”

Pansy flounced beside him, exaggerating a pout. “But by then he’ll be in love with me and he’ll thank you for it.”

“It’s not about that, Pansy. It’s about Ronald’s trust. It means something to me and I,” Draco looked across the Great Hall, to where Ronald sat next to Hermione, his head bent over her, talking and talking while she tried to read her newspaper. “I haven’t been the best at honouring his trust lately.”

Pansy sighed and perched her elbows on the table, picking at a bowl of sliced pale orange cantaloupe no one else wanted. “Aren’t you noble?” she said. “Draco, what happened? You’ve exchanged barely a word with Ronald all week. You even told me to tell him you weren’t in when he came slamming the quaffle on the dungeon wall.”

“I was sleeping.”

“You were moping.”

Across the Great Hall, Ronald was leaning into Hermione’s arm, still chattering. With her eyes on the newspaper, she was chewing a section of a yellow apple, her mouth held sweetly closed as her jaw flexed. Draco’s pulse gave a single thud. Did she know that the kiss from the other night -- that it was not -- normal? He had told her it was nice but that was spoken purely out of panic. It was not nice. It had torn him apart, changed him. 

And now he had to step back and leave her to his brother who had wanted her for three years already, who had confided in him, and trusted him with questions as basic as his very ability to love. Draco would ignore whatever it was he was feeling for Granger. It didn’t seem possible but she might not have felt any of those feelings herself. He’d watched her every mealtime since that night, waiting to catch her glancing at him. Nothing, never.

There Ronald was now, leaning into Hermione as she showed him something printed in the paper. Potter was craning his neck to see as well, the three of them disappearing together behind the broad sheet of yellow parchment.

Trying not to sigh, Draco said, “It’s nothing, Pansy. I’m just trying to do better by him, and taking some space to figure out how.”

She took his head in her hands and pivoted it to look at her instead of the Gryffindor table. "Cheer up, Draco. Your brother adores you. The pair of you are legendary -- Gemini, right here in our midst."

Draco grimaced. "Stop. Just go say hi to him yourself if you miss him that much."

"He won't thank me for doing that while he's with Granger now, will he?" she smirked. “But I will get back to him. If he thinks he can spend an evening eye-snogging me and then never speak to me again he is dead wrong.”


	6. Six

Hermione Granger could see no point in sitting at the front of the classroom in fifth year Defense Against the Dark Arts anymore. Under Dolores Umbridge, nothing worthwhile was being taught in the class, certainly nothing that would help them pass their OWLs. Hermione’s main goal in the class was now to keep Harry calm and out of detention so he wouldn’t be hurt and he’d have free-time to start on her important new project. It was for something to replace these useless DADA classes, something only Harry could give them: the skills and experience to defend themselves.

He was still resisting the idea but she’d convince him soon. She was so sure of it she’d already started researching ways to keep Harry’s defense classes secret and secure. The boys always acted as if such things were conjured instantaneously exactly when they were needed. The truth was they only came about after a lot of work on Hermione’s part -- hours of research and experiments, nearly missing her curfew every night as she worked in secret in the vanished fifth floor room.

At least the room she’d risked so much to find was good for something. Harry did use its fire to speak to Sirius. He had tried to calm Harry down about the pain in his scar getting worse all the time, but he squarely dismissed Harry’s concerns about Umbridge being connected to Voldemort. Sirius believed she was nothing more than a terribly misguided Ministry official and all around awful person. Frankly, the conversation left Harry more dissatisfied and agitated than before.

At this moment, he was sitting beside Hermione in Umbridge’s classroom where there was, as always, “no need to talk” or do anything but read the textbook chapter. He had a new strategy for not letting himself fly into a rage over it. From their seat in the very back of the classroom, he could watch Cho Chang in profile while she read, yawned, and whispered to her friends.

With Harry subdued, Hermione slumped on her desktop, her head braced on the heel of her hand, and joined him in ogling the classmates seated in front of them. While Cho Chang was pretty, she was not responsible for the best snog of Hermione’s life, and she found herself staring instead at Draco Malfoy. He was usually reading a second book tucked inside his textbook and she would try to guess what it was. Some days, the book was blank and he sat sketching in it. If she squinted her eyes, she might sense his drawings moving over the pages.

She’d never bothered to get any good at doing that herself. Maybe she should. Maybe he could help her -- if, that is, he hadn’t stopped talking to her altogether. 

Talking isn’t everything. Looking is fine too, and it was better for her to get it over with here rather than in the Great Hall with everyone watching. After she’d contemplated his reading material for long enough, she would reward herself by looking at his shoulders, the nape of his neck, its pale skin fading into his fair hair cut so short at the back it had a rough, bristly texture before it turned longer and silky. If he turned his head toward his seatmate -- usually Pansy Parkinson -- Hermione could see the line of his nose. Pointy, yes but not hooked or hawkish, not so long it caused trouble, still elegant enough to smoothly, gently gliding against her cheek when he…

Hermione shook her head, clearing the memory away before her colour started to rise. 

As she sat up, Ronald twitched in the seat on the other side of her, her movement interrupting him in looking at his classmate of choice. He had been watching her, following her eyes to the front of the room, unable to tell if she was trying to intimidate Umbridge with her stare, or if she was brooding over the pack of Slytherin suck ups sitting at the front -- Draco and his goons and the rest. 

Parkinson was sitting with them too, but she was alright, in her way. It might be hard for other people to understand, but Ronald was Draco’s brother. He understood how people didn’t fall neatly into good and bad, especially not at their age, with adults pulling at them while they tried to sort themselves out. 

Ronald knew he was generally pitied in the pureblood community, the adopted son who wouldn’t inherit more than he needed for his own living. The fortune and the estate were Draco’s, always. But it was him who pitied Draco for the way their father brought him along to ghastly meetings, pushing him into the forefront, forcing him to answer for everything and to answer properly. Ronald was allowed to hang back with Mother, charming her lady friends, playing parlor games, Narcissa’s little blue-eyed chess prodigy with the rustic background. Though Narcissa loved him, to the others he was a toy, eye candy for older ladies. But at least the stakes were low, not that fevered, poison intensity of their father’s world. 

These were bleak thoughts best avoided by returning to looking at Parkinson. She did have a mouth on her, that was true. It was obvious whether she was talking or not, all painted up in that burgundy lipstick of hers. He knew her face ridiculously well after meeting with her in that weird fifth floor room twice already, once with Draco as a chaperone waiting outside, and once on their own. Chaperone or not, she hadn’t let him touch her either time. 

On the first day they’d looked at each other from a metre apart. They went for stretches of three minutes at a time, with breaks in between to walk and stretch and laugh off their nervousness.

“You’re a bit silly, but you’re not shy of girls at all, are you Ronald?’ she had asked him.

He had smirked. “Not at all. I like them too well to be shy.”

She had begun to saunter toward him. “That means you like me then.”

He hadn’t blushed, hadn’t even blinked as he’d answered, “Naturally.”

The second time they met, while Draco was off sulking about something or other, Ronald had expected to touch her but she’d held him off again. 

“We’re still just looking,” Pansy had explained. “But not from a metre away. From much closer.” She had sat him on the table again. “Spread your knees, Malfoy.”

He’d tried to quip something at her but his throat and mouth were suddenly too dry for speech and he’d only managed to sound slightly strangled.

“Oh, grow up, Ronald,” she’d laughed at him. “Your legs are too long and if I’m going to get close to you while you’re sitting, you’re going to have to make room.”

He’d cleared his throat. “Right. Come on in.”

“Arms at your sides,” she’d said as she crossed her own arms across her chest. “Admit it. You’ve never been this close to a girl without touching her.”

He’d shaken his head. “Sure I have. Like when queuing to board a train, or to get in to dinner -- “

“I mean face to face, like this,” she’d said.

“Nothing I can’t handle.” He’d smirked again, leaning forward, as close to her face as he could get without pressing the end of his nose against hers, daring her to bolt.

“You know,” she’d said, “up this close, all blurry and nosy, you’re very much like your brother.”

He’d sat back quickly. “Sick, Parkinson.”

“What? People tell me I look like my sisters all the time,” she’d begun.

He’d scrubbed his face with his hands, as if trying to knock whatever resemblance he might bear to Draco off of it. “Because you’re blood relatives, aren’t you? Not like Draco and me, not if you don’t count all that inbred twenty-eight business.”

She’d rolled her eyes. “That is not what I mean. Draco said you had reason to suspect you were conceived under the influence of a love potion. And it’s not -- well, it’s not inconceivable that Mrs. Weasley and your dad -- “

He’d shouted a laugh into her face. “Not a love potion accident between Lucius Malfoy and Molly Weasley, you daft thing. Watch your mouth. That’s how nasty rumours get started. I mean one between my birth parents.”

Pansy had stood back, out from between Ronald’s knees, turning in a circle. “Ronald, that makes no sense. If they were already in love they wouldn’t need to -- ”

“But they would have been tired. I was their sixth born, after the twins and everything. They might've needed a boost,” he’d argued. “I’m not really making an argument for how they must have felt. It’s about me, how I feel when I try to get close to people.”

Pansy had tossed her head. “No. My scenario still makes more sense.”

Ronald had stood up. “It might in a far-fetched trashy romance novel.”

She had scoffed. “Far-fetched? I’m stood here giving you kissing lessons aren’t I? How much more proof do you need that trashy romance scenarios aren’t necessarily far-fetched?”

“Kissing lessons?” he’d burst. “What kind of kissing lessons make me keep my hands stuck to a tabletop?”

“The kind that are going to work,” she’d said, shouting at him. “Honestly, Ronald. If I’d come in here the first day, marched up to you, snogged you for an hour and left, you’d have already forgotten all about me. No connection. Don’t act like that very thing hasn’t happened with you and other girls before.”

Of course it had.

She’d gone on. “If I’d gone straight to your mouth, right from the start, you’d have left here with even less of a connection to me after an hour of kissing than you have with me right now after never having laid a hand on me. Admit it.”

His pale ginger eyelashes had blinked in rapid succession. He’d sighed. “Fine, we’ll keep trying this your way. When do we meet next?”

He hadn’t admitted to anything at the time, but now, from the back of the silent, suffering DADA classroom, Ronald asked himself if he felt connected to Pansy Parkinson yet. He wasn’t sure. He definitely needed to meet with her again. 

In the meantime, he had these double periods of DADA to spend using what she taught him about staring with an intent to connect to look at Hermione. If only she would turn and look at him.

\-----------------------

The rest of the afternoon was quidditch practice. Harry was finally finished the latest round of detention and was on a broom again, at last. Maybe everyone was frustrated with Umbridge that year, but the matches had taken on a violent, angry feel. Draco’s unsavory Austrian doctor would have called it cathartic. But everyone knows catharsis only amplifies dangerous energy.

“So watch yourselves,” Angelina, the team captain, warned everyone. “Especially you, Harry. Seeker is not a full-contact position but they way everyone’s playing this year -- just keep your head up.”

Whatever the games were like, the practice was pleasant enough even though most of the Slytherin team, led by Montague, showed up to heckle from the stands. They ran through their cycle of derisive chants for all the players. No one was particularly bothered, except for Ronald who noticed immediately that Draco hadn’t come along. In truth, he would have been happier if Draco was there, sneering at them. It would mean he wasn’t avoiding him anymore, for whatever reason.

The Ravenclaw team was in the stands too, including Cho Chang. Harry disappeared to make sure to accidentally run into her after practice. Alone in the fieldhouse, Ronald hung up his equipment slowly, finishing with a great sigh, knowing it was time to find Draco and sort him out, the moody, dramatic git.

Draco was in the last place Ronald would have gone looking for him that evening, having taken the stairs to the vanished room on the fifth floor, the room which existed, as far as Ronald was concerned, solely as a place for Harry to talk to Sirius and for Pansy Parkinson to tease him. 

Up Draco went all the same. Simply ignoring what happened in the room with Hermione Granger the night she tripped the alarm on the Gryffindor tower’s exit wasn’t working. He was still thinking about it, obsessing over it. On its own, the memory of the kiss would have been a favourite of his if it didn’t keep him feeling unworthy to speak to Ronald. That could not go on. And since Granger wouldn’t even look at him anymore, he didn’t need to agonize over letting it go. There was nothing to hold onto. She was already gone. He went to face that reality, in the form of an empty room where he would sit on a cold floor until he felt nothing.

He was sitting in a corner sketching the intricate design of the pair of windows when she shouldered through the false wall. For stars’ sake...

“Granger?”

“Malfoy?”

He snapped his sketchbook closed over his quill. “What are you doing here? On the run again?”

She tossed her head. “No. It’s just a nice quiet place to work on extra-credit projects. I told you. This room is exactly what I was looking for.”

He clucked his tongue, rising to stand. “There are extra-credit projects of which I was not informed?” he said. “Doubtful. That’s the kind of excuse that works with your dullard boyfriends but it’s wasted on me, Granger.”

She sniffed. “What are you doing here then? Sulking?”

“Sketching,” he said. “Because art is a worthy pursuit even without reward, not just to please some teacher. And it is a crime that we keep attending this school, year after year, with no education whatsoever on this ancient castle’s architecture. Except for a few mentions in “Hogwarts: A History,” there’s nothing…”

What was she hearing? Draco Malfoy, a boy her age, was going off on architecture, pointing at the windows with his sketchbook, verging on lecturing as he ranted over the detail in the glass, the lead between its panes, the height and shape of the arch, the metallic salts, the alchemy used to colour the glass.

“...and no one even mentions it. Bloody shame, don’t you think?” he was finishing. 

She blinked. “Hogwarts: A History” -- Draco had read it, read it and found it lacking and gone to the library to read more. Now he was asking what she thought of it. She took in a deep breath to slow her pulse before she said, “Yes, a wasted opportunity. To be sure.”

He folded his hands around his book. “See how easy that was? Sharing my interest in this room in a pleasant, informative way? Now it’s your turn, Granger.”

She stiffened. Informative? He was looking for information. Did he know, or at least suspect, that she was plotting to subvert Ministry schemes to stifle combat training at Hogwarts by starting a secret class with Harry? Was Draco here not as an art enthusiast but as a spy for his father’s cronies? 

“I’ve already told you. I’m working on a charms project,” she insisted. “ And I don’t care if you don’t like that answer, Malfoy. You’ve done nothing to deserve an explanation from me.”

He was smirking. “Haven’t I? Didn’t I save your skin the other night?” He eyed the smooth, unscarred flesh on the top of her hand where Umbridge’s now infamous cursed quills were known to leave their cuts. Her fingers were clenched around the spine of the book she’d borrowed from the library on Protean charms. Draco was reaching toward her. Daughter of two steady-handed dentists, she willed herself not to start shaking as he came closer. But when his fingers were close enough to touch hers, he took the book instead.

He flipped to the table of contents, whistling. “This is dark magic, Granger.”

She snatched the book back. “Only if you’re a dark wizard.”

“It’s how the Dark Lord calls them, you know.” The hard, taunting edge of his voice was rounded off with a sadness now. He turned his back to her. “That mark in their arms. It burns and they have to come running or die.”

She lowered her voice, suddenly sad herself, stepping toward his back, the view of him she knew best, the one that made her feel safest. “Then no one should ever take that mark. Not ever. No matter what. No matter who tells them to do it. No one deserves to be enslaved like that.”

“That’s the thing about being enslaved, isn’t it, Granger,” he said, turning to find her closer than he expected, not safe at all. “Enslaved people don’t get to make choices.”

From where she stood, she could smell his hair again. Her heart crashed with a desire to fill her arms with him, even as that same heart broke with compassion. Those awful people his father was always taking him to meet, thrusting him about with the handle of his walking stick, while Ronald ate finger sandwiches and beamed his blue-eyes at the guests at Narcissa’s garden parties. What was their father doing to Draco?

“You haven’t so much as looked at me since the last time we met in this room,” he said, low and rumbling, taking another step closer.

She huffed. “How could you know that, since you haven’t been looking at me either?”

“I’m looking at you now.”

She raised her head, her eyes tracking up his throat, to his chin, stalling at his mouth before she could find his eyes. She’d felt his lips but never looked at them closely. As she took them in with her eyes, her posture was aligning itself to her fullest height, unconsciously bringing her closer to them.

“Granger, you should know that ki -- “

Draco’s voice was drowned out by loud, almost giddy arguing and laughing. Hermione spun toward the door to find Ronald bounding into the room followed far too closely by Pansy Parkinson. His eyes widened, shocked to find her there with Draco. Behind Hermione’s back, Draco met his brother’s gobsmacked stare. 

Draco raised one finger and, slick as you please, began to lie. “Pansy, there you,” he said. “Yes, it’s like I said. The only fire not watched in the entire school is this one here. Thank you, Ronald, for showing her.”

Ronald took it up as best he could. “Yeah. Yeah this one is completely private, Parkinson. You can definitely talk to your Durmstrang boyfriend from here without your parents finding out.”

She twisted her neck to glare up at him over her shoulder. “Durmstrang boyfriend?”

“Aw, don’t be shy, Parkinson,” he said, punching her lightly on the arm. “No need to be embarrassed of it in front of Hermione. If anyone understands the appeal of your dear Zdravko, with the boots and the fur and the shouting, it’ll be Hermione, won’t it?”

Hermione groaned. “Right. I’m off. Enjoy your fire, Parkinson.”

“Keep it a secret, would you?” Ronald called out just as she was passing through the one-sided door.

When she was gone, Pansy elbowed Ronald in the stomach.

He bent over, groaning and swearing.

“Dear Zdravko, my Durmstrang boyfriend? What was that all about?” she demanded.

“What? It activated her Viktor Krum nerves and got her to leave in a hurry, didn’t it?” Ronald argued. “Zdravko is a good name, taken in honour of one of the best chess opponents I had all summer."

She rolled her eyes. "Who cares, Ronald?"

"Well, no one," he allowed. "But at least Hermione let us off."

"Are you sure you fancy her?" Pansy asked. "You do talk about her like she's your mother, you know. Just ask Draco."

"Ridiculous. Our mother's a darling," Draco said with a wink to Pansy. "But well-played, Ronald. Impressive way to get clear of her."

Ronald pointed at him. "See, Pansy? I don’t know about you, but I was not up to being questioned by her right now, right in the middle of one of our lessons.”

“Ah, yes,” said Draco, glad beyond words himself to not be called on to answer for what he was doing when they found him here, alone with Granger. “What grope-level have the pair of you worked up to this week? Elbows to the stomach, from the look of it.”

Ronald grabbed Pansy’s hand and waved it in Draco’s face. “No, we’ve graduated from eye-snogging to hand-snogging.”

“For the love of Boggarts, Ronald,” Pansy hissed as she yanked her hand free of his.

For the first time since he kissed Hermione Granger, Draco laughed at his brother. “Right,” he said. “Excuse me while I leave you to it.”


	7. Seven

“Ron!“

“Ronnie!“

“Ronnie-kins, oi!”

Draco bounced his shoulder off Ronald’s as they walked toward the smell of dinner in the Great Hall. “Come on,” Draco said, glancing back at the Weasley twins, the school’s true Gemini. “You know ignoring them never works.”

Ronald sighed. “Maybe not. But it does buy us a little time.”

Draco snorted. “Time for what?”

“Time to come closer to death.”

“Ronald Weasley Malfoy!” the twins called in unison.

He groaned but still wouldn’t stop to face them.

As Draco said, they would not be ignored. They had overtaken Ronald by now, each of them clamping an overly large hand around his each of his elbows, crowding Draco out of the way. “Oh, there you are. Can you hear us now, Ron?” they shouted at him, steering him through the Entrance Hall, away from supper and toward the exit.

“Yeah, what is it you want today?” he said shuffling between them, not bothering to resist anymore.

Draco was shaking his head, keeping his course toward the Great Hall when the twins stopped, calling to him now. “Where do you think you’re going, Slim?” Fred said.

“Yeah, Ronnie, invite your vampire to come along this time,” George added.

Ronald clenched his eyes shut, rolled his shoulders. “He’s not a -- “

“Leave it, Ronald. I’m coming,” Draco said, morbidly curious. 

Uncomfortable as these exchanges between Ronald and the Weasley twins were, they were fascinating to Draco. He couldn’t look away. It was unspeakably odd to see bold, brazen Ronald Malfoy subdued by his blood brothers, forced to the bottom of a pecking order he had no hope of subverting.

Was this what Ronald would have been like if he’d stayed with the Weasleys all through his childhood? What if Lucius Malfoy had gone to jail after the war and Ronald’s ‘real’ mother, the one he shared with Draco, hadn’t been presented with him to raise as her darling, and he had been left to grow up the full-time punching bag of these two brutes? From the looks of it, he still would have played quidditch. But maybe he’d have been the kind of nervous player who vomited before every match.

The four of them were outside the castle now, in a bracing wind and autumn twilight under the castle’s outdoor lanterns. "This is for young master Draco," George began, handing him a stack of books.

He turned them over in his hands. They were potions books, expensive and rare, titles Draco had never seen anywhere except --

"Hey, these are from home," Draco said.

"That's right. Ron is coming along nicely in learning to share, like a good brother," Fred said. "Mummie and Daddy Malfoy probably buy two of everything for the pair of you, so how would Ron ever learn to share without us around?"

George grabbed Ronald by the face, squashing his cheeks. "You're welcome, Ronnie."

“Well, you can be sure of this,” Draco began, speaking over George, unhappy that the Malfoy library had been violated, and fairly certain this wasn’t the first time Ronald had lent the Weasleys books. “Our parents didn’t buy us each our own fourteenth century first edition copy of The Arcane Arte of Amorous Alchemy.”

Fred forced a laugh. “Don’t be cross, Malfoy. We only came crawling to Ron out of desperation. Ran into a bit of a love potion emergency. We reckoned we had a line on a good one for our shop’s opening inventory, and then our supplies were burned up all at once. Left us scrambling for a new recipe.”

“And love potions are not the kind of formula they keep shelved here at the school library,” George finished.

Ron gaped at Draco. “Amorous Alchemy -- as in, love potions?”

“Yes, we can’t have a full service joke shop without a reliable supply of short-acting love potions,” Fred went on. “And we would have had the very best -- premium, the kind that has to be kept under lock and key, every purchase registered in case there’s an inquiry, no sales to anyone under-aged -- “

“But then Mum had to go spare and blast the basic ingredient for it into dust," George said, still stinging. “Two sacks of Milletus root, a whole afternoon of digging through the mud, and she destroyed it all, right before our eyes, to punish us for skiving off to forage it at Aunt Muriel’s.”

Draco whistled. “Milletus. Wow. They say the pollen alone -- ”

“Right?” George said, batting Draco’s arm. 

“And you say it grows on Prewett land? Did you know this, Ronald?” he asked.

Ronald was speechless, barely able to shake his head ‘no.’

“Can you imagine,” Fred went on, “what the profits would’ve been once we announced Milletus-based love potions were back on the market, but only at Weasleys? We’d all be rich as Malfoys if we weren’t too noble to sell off the Milletus to anyone but the Ministry.”

George was tutting, shaking his head, his free enterprising business senses horribly offended by his ancestors’ arrangement.

“But -- but -- ” Ronald was sputtering, something Draco only ever saw him do in front of these Weasleys, and maybe Granger. “But love potions -- they’re not pranks. They’re extremely dangerous. If you’re lucky, the worst they do is humiliate people. If you’re unlucky, they can ruin people’s lives, their families, their health, start wars even -- “

The twins had each thrown an arm over Ronald’s shoulders, petting his head in a parody of calming him down. “Now, Ron,” George was saying. “Listen to you. You’re your mum’s boy, you are. Every bit as hysterical as she was when she caught us moving Milletus.”

“But we knew you’d be like this,” Fred said. “And we still need some help with the final stages of the love potion we ended up settling on. And that’s why we asked you to bring your little mate along for this conference.” He nodded at Draco. “He’s not the only Slytherin we plan to approach but he is the first to have that honour since his family is well-known for ruthless business acumen and not so much for their -- what’s the word I want?”

He was asking George, but it was Draco himself who answered. “Scruples.”

“Yes, that’s it,” Fred beamed, stepping closer to Draco, not daring to take him under his arm but inclining his head toward him as if he had. “Now Malfoy, our new love potion -- well, we had to modify it from the old formulas. It needs testing, but we’ve taken that as far as we can without -- erm -- volunteers. And since we can't bribe first-years for this one -- ”

Ronald jumped as if electrocuted. “We’re not volunteering.”

George snagged him by the back of his robes. “Of course you’re not. Just stop and listen.”

Fred went on. “Malfoy, I’ve seen you boss your cronies into all sorts of trouble. It’s eerie -- sick. Aren’t there a pair of them, maybe on the cusp of dating, who need a little push that you could boss into testing our potion? Or maybe there’s some girl who likes you but who you’d only like to snog for a day and then blame it all on a love potion accident. We could definitely arrange that. Think of it. No strings attached and a potion to blame it on in the end.”

“Yeah, blame us,” George added. “Blame us and our (hopefully) irresistible potion far and wide. Can’t buy advertising better than a scandal, isn’t that right Freddie?”

“Too right,” Fred said. “So what do you say, Malfoy? Who do you have? For yourself or someone else. We’d offer you money but we thought you’d appreciate the social value more than gold.”

Ronald sprung to life, taking Draco by the elbow. “He’s not serving up someone to assault with your love potion.”

“It’s not assault if they agree to it or if he doses himself,” Fred hurried to say.

“It’s still not ethical,” Ronald shouted back at him. “Love potions -- you don’t understand what you’re dealing with.”

“And you think you do?” Fred said, folding his arms, crowing with sarcasm. “You’ve been affected by a love potion, have you, little brother? Cursed? How was it? Do tell?”

“Maybe I have!” Ronald snapped. “Ask yourselves, you idiots, why your mother would have reacted so violently and burned all that Milletus on sight. It’s not about skiving. It’s about me, isn’t it? It’s about why she was up for it, why she was up the duff already when the pair of you were still bratty babies.”

Draco stood watching, his eyes wide, partly with pride at Ronald for finally talking back to the twins after all these years, partly with shock for what he dared to say to them about their mother.

Fred and George were standing taller, aligning themselves shoulder to shoulder. Fred spoke. “What do you have to say about our mother?”

Ronald was squaring up as well. “Nothing. I hardly know her, truth be told. They force me to spend some of every holiday with you lot, but when I get there the pair of you keep the place such a madhouse I can barely speak to her. So you tell me what there is to say about her. If you don’t know, go on and ask her. I wish you would. Who knows? We might be surprised by what she’s really been up to.”

That was the moment the twins fell on Ronald, beating him. No one produced a wand -- it was a family row, after all -- but Ronald was letting out a lifetime of hurt as he flailed his arms to keep from getting pinned down by one twin, and kicked at the other. When Fred closed a fist and managed to connect it with Ronald’s eyebrow, making it bleed, Draco dropped The Arcane Arte of Amorous Alchemy to the ground and flew into the fray. At first he was trying to restrain the Weasleys to give Ronald a chance, but soon he was hit and kicked enough to be throwing punches himself.

It might have stayed a family fight between four loosely connected not-quite brothers if Harry Potter hadn’t arrived and upgraded the fight to a brawl. He’d been coming back from trying to show the thestrals to Hermione when he saw Draco swinging at the Weasleys. He was always more inclined to see Ronald as a Weasley than a Malfoy, and he needed nothing more to send him charging in to defend him from Draco, ignoring Hermione as she called him back.

Even Ronald, with his head crushed in the crook of George’s arm, managed to cough out a muffled, “Harry, no. Umbridge…"

Harry fought anyway, sweating and swearing, more relieved than any of them, perhaps, to have an outlet for the weeks and weeks of rage he’d felt since coming back to school, to his slandered reputation, and to the Ministry masquerading as a teacher, Umbridge fighting him every step he took.

Harry was on the ground, his knee in Draco Malfoy’s stomach, when Professor McGonagall sailed through the castle doors, casting petrifying spells, bringing the fighting to a halt.

\---------------------------

The aftermath was awful. There was an immediate, angry meeting in Professor McGonagall’s office where the bulk of her energy was focused on Potter who kept insisting he was rescuing Ronald from Draco. When asked to confirm Potter’s version, the twins shifted on their feet, grumbling vaguely about a private family matter.

“Oh, it will be a family matter,” said McGonagall. “Your parents have been notified as have the Malfoys.”

“What about mine?” Harry asked.

Fred whistled softly.

McGonagall stared across her desk at Harry. “As your head of house, I am trying my best to nurture and protect you, Harry Potter. And that includes affixing consequences to your bad judgment so it can be refined into better judgment. And I am doing all of that while attempting to insulate you from the vindictive harassment of certain -- “

She interrupted herself as Ronald was let into the office by Madam Pomfrey, who had just mended the cut on his eyebrow. “Mister Ronald,” McGonagall said. “Come, I want no more foolish dithering. Answer me plainly. Did your brother attack you?”

Ronald looked at the four other boys standing before McGonagall’s desk, each one of them someone he could call a brother. How in the stars could he answer plainly? He did his best. “Fred and George and I went at each other first, then Draco came in to even up the sides. Harry was only there by accident.”

McGonagall was just releasing a breath of relief when, “hem-hem,” someone cleared their throat from her doorway. 

“We do not have accidents at Hogwarts.” It was Umbridge, intruding without a knock and with a glazed, hungry look like a shark smelling blood in the water. “No, no. We do not have accidents. We have choices.”

That was when Harry knew he was done for. 

By the end of the meeting, Umbridge had come to the conclusion that the Weasley twins, as students from the oldest year at school, must take the lead in settling differences without violence. Harry, in turn, needed to mind his own business and stop trawling around the school looking for fights. With that, she declared that all three of them would be punished with a lifetime ban of playing quidditch at the school. 

She ruled that the remaining boys, the Malfoy brothers, would be turned over to their parents for discipline.

To prevent further scuffles in the corridors, the boys were not dismissed together. After Umbridge left, Harry was sent away, fuming and stomping, then a sulking George, followed by a brooding Fred.

Draco was the first of the Malfoy brothers to be allowed to leave. He stepped out into the corridor, sighing heavily, rubbing hard at his temples before turning to find Hermione Granger bounding toward him, her face upturned and wide open with worry.

His heart gave the same thud it always did on catching sight of her. With the thud, a little of the anger and dread clenched in his chest loosened, and the scowl on his face softened to a question, ready to hear what she had to say.

But when she spoke, it was with a quietly livid voice. “What did you do to them?” she demanded.

Draco staggered backward, the darkness falling on him. “What did I do to THEM?” he repeated.

She tossed her head, pushing his copy of Amorous Alchemy and the rest of the books he’d been forced to abandon outside the castle against his chest. “Yes. Harry deserves an explanation for what that was all about. A lifetime ban -- this has cost him so much and he still doesn’t even know what the fight was all about.”

Draco took the books just to let them fall to the floor at his feet. They landed with a louder slam than he intended but he didn't cringe. He stepped forward until the toe of his shiny leather shoe butted up against Granger's. At this distance, he towered over her, glaring down into her face. “Yeah? Potter doesn’t know why he was punching at me, but he does know it was the right thing to do? How does that work?”

She took a step away, still frowning at him. “If it’s not how it went, then just say -- “

He followed her, backing each other away from the door to McGonagall’s office, to where they wouldn’t be so easily overheard. As he interrupted her, his voice was angry but not loud. “And Potter’s not the only one clever enough to have figured it out, yeah? You too, Granger. You’re also dead sure I deserved that beating.”

She stopped, stamping her foot on the stone floor, holding her ground, snatching at his hand, his knuckles still bloody. “Oh, so you’re innocent, are you Malfoy?“

“Malfoy, yes,” he said, shaking off her hold, but closing his hands around her wrists, moving his grip up her arms to hold her just above each elbow. Her mouth was still set in something like a snarl but her eyelids were drifting shut as his palms slid along the fabric of her blouse. “The Malfoy brothers have managed to fool Umbridge and keep their spots in the quidditch rosters. But that’s just proof positive they’re on the wrong side of all this. Well-spotted, Granger.”

He had spoken the last part with his head bent low over her face, in a hoarse whisper. She stood still, no longer accusing or arguing. Was it just her attraction to him jamming the signals to her brain, or could she sense his hurt, his bitter disappointment? Did she know how sad it made him to think that even after the intimacy they’d shared, the good will he’d tried to show her, the lifetime of affection anyone could see he had for Ronald, her first impulse was still to think the worst of him.

A part of Draco knew he should have been thinking of Ronald -- Ronald who, in a few hours, would be in the arms of their mother, lavished with comforting reassurances that he was loved and loving and no potion accident could ever change that, while Draco would be turned over to their father to be upbraided for his lack of poise and decorum, for sinking to the level of a schoolyard spat with a bunch of blood-traitors. What would Father say if he knew what he’d done to Muggle-born Granger?

It was true that he lost sight of everything his father wanted for him when it came to Granger. He knew that, and maybe he should be relieved that she was standing here now, saying all the wrong things, reminding him she did not actually like him and he needed to forget her and keep his hands off her. But in this moment of hurt, he wanted nothing more than to feel better, to feel the way he felt with her. And if her attraction to him -- if it was all there was, he would take it. 

Her eyes were closed. Gently, he settled the end of his nose against the bridge of hers, over her tear duct, and traced the length of her eyelid. Her breath shuddered slightly but she kept still as he completed the slow, smooth movement, first on her right eyelid, and then on her left. When he had finished and straightened away from her, she stepped forward, standing carefully on the ends of his shoes with the balls of her feet. On tiptoe, she was higher and closer to him, opening her eyes, inhaling to speak but also to take in his smell, heightened from the strain and sweat of the fight.

“I’ve got it wrong. So tell me.” She said it in a whisper.

“Miss Granger,” Professor McGonagall was calling from her office doorway. 

Draco and Hermione broke away from each other, red-faced and breathless, both of them stooping to gather up the dropped books. 

“Miss Granger, your assistance in this matter is most unwelcome,” McGonagall said. “Both of you, back to your houses at once. Mr. Malfoy, your parents will call for you when they arrive.” 

They fled into separate directions as McGonagall turned to speak to Ronald, hidden behind her and her tall pointed hat. She stepped aside and let him pass into the hall where he caught sight of the back of Draco’s white head, disappearing down the stairs to the dungeons.

And then he saw nothing but a pair of bright dark eyes blinking up at him. Pansy Parkinson had sprung out from behind a column in the Entrance Hall, as if she’d been waiting for him and couldn’t hang back any longer. 

“Ronald, are you alright?” she said, gasping at the sight of the freshly mended cut still red on his eyebrow. “Someone hit you? How could anyone hit you?”

He smiled, almost a laugh. “What are you doing, lurking around out here while everyone else is having their tea?”

“How can I eat?” she began, “How could I, when I’m sat in there thinking that fighting with your brothers and being caught and getting sent to the hospital wing and then having Umbridge stick her oar in -- it must be awful.”

He scoffed, but not unkindly. “Yeah, that’s what it is.”

Her fingers were tugging at the hem of his sleeve. 

His eyes were drawn down to watch them. “You know, Parkinson, you’re getting better and better at acting as if you actually like me,” he said.

She smirked. “I already told you I like you. But wait until you hear this next part. Prepare yourself.”

He smirked right back at her. “What? Are you advancing me to full-on snogging, right here in the Entrance Hall with my face still healing?” He tested his lip, tapping gingerly at a hard lump in one side of it.

She shook her head, the tips of her bobbed hair bouncing sweetly against her cheeks. “Of course not. But I was thinking you might feel better, after what you’ve been through today, if you had someone’s hand to hold. I know I would, if I was you right now. And since we’re in the middle of our experiment, I thought I’d better present myself -- to keep our data uncontaminated. It only makes -- ”

Her words died away as Ronald took her hand, his punch-swollen fingers folding gently over hers. He needed no further persuasion.

Though they had spent close to an hour earlier in the week roaming around the less traveled reaches of the school grounds holding hands as Ronald tried to learn how to connect to girls, Pansy still wasn’t used to how it made her feel. 

Honestly, she wondered sometimes if she didn’t prefer hand-holding to kissing. Ronald’s hands were large, roughen by quidditch broom handles, with a coarseness in his fingerprints that must have set off thousands of tiny pressure points in her palms and fingertips. He’d even known, without any coaching, to put her hand inside of the pocket of his cloak along with his own when it started to get cold. If Draco and Granger hadn’t been in the vanished room already by the time they got there, breaking up the moment with the need to spin a ridiculous cover story about an imaginary Bulgarian boyfriend -- stars only know what might have happened.

The fact was, this whole exercise with Ronald Malfoy was probably destroying her heart. What would become of her if, at the end of it, Ronald was still thick enough to think he had anything with Hermione Granger -- with anyone but her? 

It was nothing that could be answered today, so for now, here in the Entrance Hall, Pansy kept on her collision course with heartbreak, hoping Ronald didn’t hear it when her breath hitched at his touch. 

“You thought I wanted a hand to hold?” he said. “Well, you thought right. You got everything right. Thanks for this,” he held their hands up and laid them on his sternum “Thank you.”


	8. Eight

“Sorry for fighting, Father,” Ronald Malfoy said, throwing his arms around Lucius’s shoulders when he and Narcissa arrived at Hogwarts to discipline their boys.

Lucius sighed wearily into the ginger hair mashed against his cheek and patted Ronald firmly with one gloved hand. “You had better be,” he said. Ronald held him tighter, twisting both of them from side to side. Lucius raised a second hand to Ronald’s back, “Yes, my boy, I know how they are. The Weasleys -- I’ve let myself be overcome by them in the past as well.”

Ronald stood back. “Flourish and Blotts in our second year. I remember. That was something.”

“Something extremely unfortunate,” Narcissa said from where she sat on the settee in Professor Snape’s office, Draco’s head in her lap as he stared dead-eyed into the fire, her fingers combing through his hair. “And it’s nowhere near the worst they've provoked you.”

Lucius cringed. “Again, my darling, I apologize,” he said.

She shrugged off the apology, dark eyebrows lifted. Without taking her right hand from Draco’s hair, Narcissa reached out for Ronald’s hand with her left, drawing him to her. There was no room for him on the settee so he knelt beside her on the floor. She lifted his fringe to see to the red line of the mended cut on his eyebrow. “Whatever in the world were you fighting about? What was worth this, and worth risking your little brother getting hurt as well?”

Ronald’s lips rolled inward, into a thin, hard line without a word.

But from her lap, Draco’s voice spoke a listless, “Love potion.”

Lucius made a slow, controlled turn on his heel, away from the fireplace and toward his family. “What?”

Ronald hung his head. There was no point in resisting now Draco was giving it up. “So you’ll have heard that the twins are opening a joke shop in London after graduation, right?”

Lucius was scowling more deeply every moment. “Yes, and they’re already boasting in business circles about bringing Milletus-based love potions back to market. If true, it’s highly controversial -- foolish and dangerous. Ronald, you are not to have any part of it.”

He was on his feet. “Of course I won’t, Father. No part in that love potion, nor in love potions of any kind.”

Narcissa nodded but frowned. “Those are fine convictions, son. Yet I still don’t see how they warrant a public row at school.”

Draco sat up on the settee. “Tell them your theory, Ronald. You’ll never know anything more unless you talk to them.”

Ronald answered Draco through gritted teeth. “No, I’m working it out in my own way. You know that. I’m working it out with -- with the experiment.” He said it with his hand clenched as if he was still holding on to Pansy’s.

Lucius had no patience for the boys’ secretive nonsense. He gave his long white hair a shake. “Milletus-based potions, are the twins developing them or not? Tell me at once. I saw their parents at this year’s alumni dinner and asked about it then, but they just seemed offended that I’d dare mention it.”

Ronald eagerly followed the pivot of the conversation away from his theories about Molly Weasley’s experience with love potions. “No, the twins won’t have any more Milletus for at least a year, maybe longer. When they went to the Prewett estate to dig up the roots this fall, their mother caught them at it and burned everything up. They couldn’t stop her.”

Narcissa gave a delicate little snort. “Yes, thank the stars for Mrs. Weasley’s quick wits when it comes to Milletus plants.”

Lucius cringed again.

“You were wise to oppose them, darling,” Narcissa said, taking Ronald’s hand again. “But there’s no need for you to be so involved in Weasley business. Their mother seems to have them in check for now. And never forget that, while we have always encouraged you to associate amicably with them, they are your family in flesh only. In law, in mind, in spirit this is your family.” She swept her arm across the room. “Now walk me to the Entrance Hall floo, Ronald. Father has estate business to settle with Draco tonight which I will not linger for. I would like you to escort me out in his place.”

Arm-in-arm with Ronald, Narcissa left the office. At the door, she stopped, turning back to find Draco’s face, staring at him until her eyes glistened. He looked back at her, his own eyes large and dark and exhausted in the firelight. “Mind your father, Draco,” she said. “And never forget how completely we love you.”

The intensity in her parting words was Draco’s first hint that things were about to become much more grave. The second was when the door at the rear of the office opened, and Professor Snape swooped into the room, black robes flapping like the wings of an enormous bat.

“Severus, thank you for assistance this evening,” Lucius began.

He answered with a small bow. “Please, Lucius, make yourself comfortable. Your tension is unsettling for the boy.”

It was kind but untrue. Draco was accustomed to his father’s tense, aggravated manner. It was a mood Lucius Malfoy had been mired in ever since the end of the Triwizard Tournament.

“I mean to unsettle him,” Lucius said to Snape. “He ought to be unsettled.”

“He ought to be in awe,” Snape corrected him. “Tell him why.”

Lucius took a deep breath. “Draco, it’s all true. What Potter says he’s seen -- in the graveyard at the end of the tournament. It’s true. The Dark Lord has returned.”

Draco’s blood surged, his jaw falling open. “It’s true?”

“It is,” Snape confirmed. “As we speak, he is gathering power, organizing, mounting a strategy to infiltrate the Ministry from within while it is in the hands of that insecure, power-hungry, easy dupe -- that Fudge and his appointees.”

Draco blinked. “Umbridge too then?”

“Yes,” Lucius said. “As everyone knows, Umbridge is here to put down Potter‘s stories and reinforce public faith in the Ministry. In order for her mission to succeed, there must be no sign at all of the Dark Lord’s return. Not in the school, not anywhere.”

“Her mission here at Hogwarts is two-fold,” Snape went on. “First, she is to discredit Potter, confirming him as a liar not only to be ignored but despised. Second, she is to discredit Professor Dumbledore, and ultimately, to replace him as headmaster, giving the Ministry full control of the school and its pupils.”

“Both of these missions,” Lucius continued, “support the Dark Lord’s. The Ministry does not realize it, but it remains a fact.”

“The difficulty we face,” Snape said, “is that Professor Umbridge is not likely to succeed. She is cruel, patronizing, and glaringly disingenuous, making her terribly unpopular with teachers and students.”

Draco could sense what was coming next. He made a desperate attempt to deflect it. “Filch likes Umbridge quite a lot,” he said.

Lucius shook his head. “I’m sorry, Draco. It’s not enough. We need to create support for her among the students.”

Snape took it up again, as if they had rehearsed this entire speech turn by turn. “There are only two students powerful enough to lend her a swell of support. One is Potter, who is obviously useless in this. The other is yourself.” Snape drew himself up as tall as he could. “The Dark Lord calls upon you, Draco Malfoy, to serve him in turning the tide of student sympathies in favour of Professor Dolores Umbridge.”

Draco winced, dropping his head into his hands.

“Yes, Draco. It will not be easy,” Snape said. “You will not sway all of the students but perhaps most of Slytherin house. Play it up as an extension of your animosity for Potter. It is always unfailingly believable. Whatever Professor Umbridge does, help. Give her your full support.”

Draco still hadn’t raised his head from his hands. Lucius sat beside him on the settee, his hand on Draco’s chin, tilting it upward. 

“The Dark Lord is on the move, Draco,” he said. “It’s already begun. He may come to rest very near to us very soon. The closer he comes to the family, the less able I am to keep us -- ” He paused, glancing warily at Snape. “The closer he is, the more we all become affected by his power, for good and for ill. Draco,” he said, “you are called not only to serve the Dark Lord, but to serve our entire family, and the rest of the Malfoy line extending on into future generations.”

Their calls were overblown -- ridiculous in their ways. These two men, in his life from the very beginning, embellishing every bit of it with drama and intensity he both admired and despised. At the moment, Draco couldn’t bring himself to look at them. He blinked, his eyes fixed on the door Narcissa and Ronald had just passed through. His mother and brother -- he loved them. He envied their distance from his father’s business . And he had no choice but to join in protecting them.

\--------------------------------

With Harry off the quidditch team, it became easier for Hermione to persuade him to begin his secret, supplemental defense classes. On the first Hogsmeade weekend, they met with a band of other students to form Dumbledore’s Army. 

Ronald came alone, of course, judging it wise to leave Draco out of any activity led by Harry and Hermione. He knew their father would hate it too, but didn’t want to dwell too long on why that might be. Cho Chang was there, batting her long, dark eyelashes at Harry while he fielded questions about his history of fighting Dementors and dark wizards. The Weasley twins were along as well, ignoring Ronald but beaming with pride at Harry, the brother they would have preferred to have in his place. 

Hermione had nearly perfected her protean charms, the galleons that would burn like Death Eaters’ dark marks when DA members needed to exchange messages. They weren’t ready to hand out yet but the jinxed parchment she’d prepared for everyone to sign their names to was ready. She really was scary.

Apart from that, the only diversion from the grind of OWL preparation was the opening match of quidditch season. Ronald seemed miserably guilty to still be playing when Harry and the twins had been permanently disqualified. He had gone to Angelina to resign, at least for the rest of the year, until the twins graduated. But she had sensed what he was after and cut it short with threats and glares. She had barely managed to fill the three vacancies on the team in time for a few weeks of practice and was loath to go through the headache all over again.

It meant that on the morning of the match, Ronald was terribly, uncharacteristically nervous, his complicated loyalties even more complicated than usual.

“Ronald, stop fretting,” Harry told him as they sat at breakfast, Ronald not eating anything. “You won’t be doing right by anyone if you freeze up with nerves and lose the match.”

Ronald nodded toward the Weasley twins, who were blowing sarcastic kisses at him from their end of the table. He tried to swallow through his dry mouth. “I don’t think those two would agree with you.”

Harry kicked Ronald’s toe underneath the table. “Don’t mind them. They reckon they’ve got nothing to lose at this school anymore, not even the quidditch cup, but they certainly don’t speak for everyone.”

Ronald groaned into his untouched, rapidly cooling bowl of oatmeal porridge. “Is Hermione coming to watch, or has she finished with quidditch now that there’s only me playing?”

“Of course she’s coming,” Harry said. “Your friendship doesn’t have to be compounded with mine to make it worth her while."

Ronald groaned again. “Our friendship.”

Outside the Great Hall, Hermione was rushing down the stairs, late for breakfast after a detour to the library for one more source for her latest transfiguration essay. The DA was taking much more of her time than she’d expected. She would really rather use the hours today’s quidditch match might demand on anything else but sitting watching all the little balls flying around. But Ronald had been suffering so much since the fight with his brothers she couldn’t abandon him now. Still, she had a book tucked inside her cloak and maybe she could use a Disillusionment spell on it and read it during the match without anyone noticing.

That’s what she was thinking until, from the stairwell to the dungeons on the far side of the Entrance Hall, Draco Malfoy emerged dressed for the morning’s match. She knew then she would not be able to look away from the match after all. This was true even though she hadn’t seen much of Draco lately -- or maybe because she hadn’t seen much of him. He seemed to be avoiding her ever since she’d wounded him by jumping to the wrong conclusion about his role in the fight with the Weasleys. 

He didn’t deserve rough treatment then but he might deserve it by now. Draco had started a new grating movement among the Slytherins of standing up for Umbridge. They were already her favourite house to dispatch when the Gryffindor tower alarm sounded after curfew, but they were her preferred house in every way now. Where it used to be Umbridge against the entire class, there was now a faction of students, led by Draco, which not only didn’t oppose her, but put down those who did.

All of that made Hermione particularly angry with herself when she froze on the spot in the Entrance Hall, staring at him. She was unprepared for the lurch in her heart at the sight of him in fitted white trousers and protective leather quidditch gear for the first time since he’d kissed her, weeks before. 

To make it worse, something drew his eye in her direction, and for a moment, they stood looking at each other across the otherwise empty hall. He seemed to shudder at the eye contact, as if slightly ill, breaking it to leave her without a word as he went in to breakfast.

After a moment, she followed, falling into the empty space on the bench beside Ronald. 

“Not eating?” she said.

He grumbled unintelligibly.

She felt his forehead. “You’re not feverish,” she said, her palms pressed against his cheeks, cradling his face like his mother would do when she was trying to read his temperature with her hands. He looked up at her, still miserable but with a tenderness she seldom saw on his F-boy face. She patted his cheek a final time and set about eating.

Harry kept up his pep talk, Ronald still sighing and trying to eat. She watched the pair of them. As Harry chattered about plays and strategy, he kept glancing toward the Ravenclaw table where Cho Chang was wearing a Gryffindor scarf, one she may well have got from Harry himself. Ronald listened, his pale ginger eyelashes sweeping his cheeks with a demureness that made him lovelier than usual. All the Ronald fans in school could see that. Even the Draco fans wouldn’t be able to deny it. 

Hermione was not a fan, she was a friend. She was a friend because Ronald was not only tall and athletic and lovely but also sweet, loyal, and kind when he wasn’t trying to snog everything in sight. And frankly, there hadn’t been any reports of Ronald romancing and immediately tiring of anyone yet this year. 

She watched him folding his napkin and laying it over the food he couldn’t stomach. Maybe he was finally growing out of his F-boy ways, and she wondered, not for the first time, what it might be like to kiss him. It was not a thought motivated by idle curiosity or true desire. It was just that, ever since the kiss with Draco, she’d been hoping that perhaps the reason kissing Viktor Krum was nothing like it had more to do with Viktor being a particularly bad fit for her rather than Draco being an astronomically good fit. 

She had been thinking of testing the hypothesis. If she kissed someone else and felt more like she did with Draco than with Viktor, it would be proof that Draco was not special -- they were not special together -- and she could convince herself to forget him once and for all. 

The thought occurred to her again as she sat with the boys at breakfast. If Draco could make her melt into him by simply touching his nose to hers, it meant the hypothesis testing kiss didn’t need to be a dramatic moment with a lot of saliva involved, or even lips. A light kiss in a public place might be all that was needed. 

Harry wouldn’t thank her for even a small kiss in front of Cho Chang. But Ronald, nobly single at the moment and in a terrible emotional state, might benefit from a small kiss of encouragement before a difficult match. At any rate, the high emotional stakes of the quidditch event was giving her the excuse she needed to test her hypothesis.

Without asking, she closed her eyes and pressed a warm, soft kiss against his cheek. “Good luck, Ronald,” she said. “See you out there, Harry.”

Ronald watched her swing her leg over the bench and leave, tracking her movement as if seeing her through a dense mist. His eyes were wide, his mouth open, his fingers rising to touch the spot on his cheek where her mouth had been. He kept watching, his eyes not wavering until the back of her bushy head disappeared through the entrance doors. 

Not even the commotion at the Slytherin table could draw his attention away. Not the “Oh!” of Daphne Greengrass as she rushed to dab a napkin in Pansy Parkinson’s lap, sopping up the juice Pansy had just spilled all over herself.

\-------------------------

The match was vicious, just as Angelina warned her team it would be. Ronald felt slightly confundused on two occasions -- nothing that made him give up a goal, but a few tugs that made him look silly in front of the entire school.

The game’s announcer, who was also the Weasley twins’ best mate, Lee Jordan, was sure to point it out to anyone who missed it. “Gryffindor’s Malfoy is not looking quite himself today, doing some lurching between the rings,” Jordan crowed into the megaphone. “Oh, and what’s this? I wonder the referee didn’t call keeper interference on the last play.”

On the pitch, Ronald was repositioning his helmet, his head thrashing back and forth, looking for the lightning fast broom that had nearly collided with his.

Jordan explained what had happened too quickly for Ronald and most everyone else to see. “Would have been a rare sight to have a seeker called for keeper interference, but there goes Slytherin’s Malfoy again, swooping fast from behind, right up over the rings on Gryffindor’s Malfoy. Let’s play a good game, lads, and here’s hoping there’s no trouble in paradise.”

Draco pulled himself up, high above the pitch, out of Ronald’s range.

“And Slytherin’s Malfoy better keep his head in the game,” Jordan was saying, “or brand new Gryffindor seeker, Ginny Weasley, will run away with this one…”

In the end, Ginny did exactly that.

Draco was last to leave the changing rooms after the match. Ronald was waiting outside.

“Congratulations,” Draco said, failing to keep the tone of his voice flat but succeeding in not turning to look his brother in the eye as he walked out of the fieldhouse.

Ronald stepped in front of him, walking backwards up the narrow pathway, forcing his way into his brother’s face. “You might have won the match yourself if you hadn’t been so preoccupied with trying to knock me off my broom.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you? Jordan only went on about it over the megaphone for us all.” Ronald bobbed in front of Draco as he tried to slip past him. “Draco, what is wrong with you? Ever since the fight with Harry and the Weasleys, you haven’t been right, but today you’re barking mad.”

“So you’re with Granger now,” Draco said. It was not a question.

“What?”

“You’re a couple now. Everyone saw the pair of you at breakfast.”

“That?”

“That is fine, Ronald, but what did I tell you?” Draco went on, his voice rising, finger pointing. “What was the one thing I told you when you began your -- experiment with Pansy Parkinson? I told you to be careful with Pansy’s feelings. No matter how tough she acts, she’s not just a prop.” 

Ronald gaped at him. “Tough? A prop? No, she couldn’t be sweeter.”

“And still,” Draco said, “without any warning to her, you’re off snogging other girls in public.”

“Draco!” Ronald called over his ranting. “Wait up. First of all, that was not snogging, you daft git. That was a pre-game peck on the cheek for luck, obviously. It was -- nothing.”

Draco scoffed. “Then why did that ‘nothing’ leave you sitting there stunned for a full five minutes afterward?“

“I was surprised, alright? And this wasn’t just any ‘other girl,’ as you say. This was my dream girl.”

Draco sneered. “Please, Ronald.”

“Look, no matter what I felt about it, Granger and I are not together,” Ronald went on. “Yeah, it was weird that she kissed me. It’s not like her. But nothing’s changed between us -- nothing I know of. And I couldn’t warn Pansy, could I? I had no warning myself. How was I supposed to react?”

Draco was shaking his head, marching toward the castle again. “Not my problem.”

Ronald went on anyway, calling after him. “I couldn’t very well slap Hermione across the mouth and storm away offended as a show for Pansy.”

Draco stopped, spinning to face Ronald again, scoffing at him from where he stood above him on the pathway. “Is that what you wanted to do?”

Ronald’s face blanched. “No, but -- but help me, Draco. I got kissed by my dream girl today, with everyone watching, and it wasn’t -- the connection -- it wasn’t…”

He couldn’t finish. Draco’s angry posture slackened. “Don't, Ronald. It doesn’t mean you’re cursed,” he said. “This isn’t a proper test of whether you’re wrecked by a love potion.”

Ronald looked up at him, his face full of fear. “Isn’t it?”

“No, of course not,” Draco said. “You were caught off guard, worried about the match and the Weasleys and everything. You weren’t in a receptive frame of mind. The feelings between you didn’t have a chance to develop. And it was just on the bloody cheek. Don’t panic, Ronald.”

Ronald's tense shoulders loosened. "Right. No panic. I'll stick to the plan. Kiss Hermione properly after lessons with Pansy." His eyes bulged wide again. "Pansy -- what am I supposed to do now that she's mad at me?”

Draco blew out his breath. "Hurt might be a better description of it. Hurt and embarrassed to be hurt. So don't make a big deal out of it, or she'll only feel worse. Explain what happened at breakfast with Granger, tell her you still don't feel anything, and ask Pansy very nicely if she’ll keep -- helping you.”

Ronald was nodding furiously. “Right. Yes. We’ve got an appointment tonight. If she comes, that is.” He grabbed Draco’s wrist, twisting it to read his watch. “Gotta run. Thanks, mate.” He loped away, moving quickly toward the castle as Draco stood and watched him go. 

Ronald wasn't with Granger. Draco hadn't liked thinking he was, but he didn't like the relief he felt at knowing it either. It had been weeks since Draco had touched Granger. Whatever ridiculous reaction happened between them, it must have burnt itself out by now. This ludicrous pang of jealousy had to be the last of it, and now it was finished. He drew in a deep, cleansing breath.

Starting up the path himself, Draco walked on alone. He had almost reached the stone steps when he stopped as something sparked in front of his face -- blue lights like a Lumos spell come unmoored from the end of a wand. He jumped, drawing his own wand, looking into the brush on the side of the footpath for the source of it.

“Malfoy.”

“Granger?"

She stepped out of the thicket, pulling broken twigs out of her hair.

"Granger, I'm in no mood to talk with you," he said, turning his suddenly flushed face away from her.

"Good," she said. "What I need from you requires no talking."


	9. Nine

Draco Malfoy stood on the footpath leading from the quidditch pitch to the castle, the crowds long dissipated, his heart racing from the jolt of hearing his name called out of the woody brush at his side. Hermione Granger was stepping toward him out of shade dim enough that she’d lit the end of her wand.

She wanted to speak with him, only she said she didn’t. “What I need from you requires no talking,” she said, extinguishing her light and shaking the broken twigs picked up from her hiding place out of her hair.

“What’ve you done to yourself?” he asked her, speaking anyway. “You look like you’ve been attacked by Professor Grubbly-Plank’s bowtruckles.”

She almost laughed. “Then help me. Get the ones in the back, would you?”

She turned her back to him. He watched his own hand reaching toward her without anger or fear or passion for the first time. Was this a movement toward normal, neutral friendliness -- a cooling off? Or was it a step closer together, a warming up? 

Whatever it might be for her, he swallowed hard as he sunk his fingertips into her hair. Even though she’d thoroughly mauled his hair in the vanished room on the night of their kiss, thanks to the hood she’d been wearing, he’d never touched hers until now. Like a lot of curly hair, it was thick and wiry, completely different from his. It was all he could do not to coil it around his finger, holding it wound taut and silky against his skin, feeling it between his fingers like a bow string meant for a violin.

“No need to be so ginger, Malfoy. They’re just twigs, not creatures,” she said. “At least, I don’t think they are. Sound an alarm if anything sprouts arms and tries to fight you.” 

He almost laughed, lifting the mass of her hair to check for twigs, forgetting it would bare the nape of her neck to him. No, this was definitely not a cooling off. 

He dropped his hands. “You’re clean and safe,” he said. “Right. See you then.” 

By the time Hermione turned, he was already climbing back up the path. “Wait,” she called after him. “I didn’t stop you because I needed you for bowtruckle removal.”

He faked an exasperated sigh. “Why did you stop me then, Granger? I’ve got a rucksack full of filthy sports equipment, and frankly, I’m a little self conscious of it and would like to get it back to the castle for cleaning. So, if you don’t mind -- “

“Oh, don't worry. You smell fine,” she said, blushing as soon as the words left her. She forced a cough. “Anyway, it’s too bad about the match this morning. I mean, I’m happy for Ginny, winning her first time out and all but -- “

He dropped his rucksack next to his feet. “Granger, did you really stop me here to babble about a meaningless sporting event?”

Her brow creased, “Meaningless? It’s been my experience that right after a match there’s no point trying to talk to a quidditch player about anything other than the fine details of every play, whether it bores me to death or not.”

He smirked. “Well, you haven’t experienced all quidditch players, have you?” He stepped forward to pull one last tiny, crinkling leaf from her hair, over her ear. “Rehashing a game bores some of us to death as well. Not all of us play for the love of it. Some of us are there mostly to keep our fathers happy. That and to have a go at Potter. And if there’s no Potter and Ronald can bring glory to the Malfoy family without me, what does it matter if I lose, right? I’m not bothered and I’ll spare us both the post-game quidditch talk. Thanks all the same. I’ll be off now.”

“Malfoy,” she called again, a little too loudly, as if she was alarmed to see him turning away. She began again, more quietly. “I’m sorry. I’m stalling, obviously. But it’s just…” She took a huge breath, wringing her hands.

Draco smirked again as she studied her own fingers. He wasn’t sure what she wanted to say, but he did know he wasn’t making it easy for her. After she’d sat in the Great Hall and kissed his brother in front of him hours earlier, he felt like she deserved to take her turn at squirming. But she was now stammering and struggling enough to make even Draco pity her. What had become of the overly confident girl on the train, bossing the rest of the fifth year prefects like she was Head Girl? It was almost sad.

“Breathe, Granger,” Draco said. “Clear your head and start again. You’ve just stepped out of the bushes, claiming to not want to talk to me. And now you say...” He flourished his hand, inviting her to go on.

“You’re best in our year at potions,” she blurted. “I admit that. And potions take a particular kind of intelligence. One that can work its way from hypothesis to hypothesis, methodically, through trials and experiments.”

“Experiments?” His face flushed and he stepped backward, tripping slightly as the uphill grade rose higher beneath his foot than he anticipated. Experiment -- that’s what Ronald and Pansy called it when they went off alone together and…

“It’s stupid,” she said, her face growing redder as well. “But I’m caught in the middle of an experiment that I can’t advance any further without your help. See, I tested something on Ronald this morning at breakfast -- “

“Testing? Is THAT what you call it?” Draco said, surprised by the intensity of his own outburst.

“You saw,” she said.

“Everyone saw.”

Her head bobbed as she swallowed. “I shouldn’t have done it. I know that now. Is he alright?”

Draco scooped his rucksack off the ground. “I’m not getting involved, Granger. If you want a line on whether Ronald fancies you or not, ask him yourself. Or send Potter. Send anyone but me.”

“No, that’s not the hypothesis I was testing,” she said, lunging forward to grab the dangling strap from Draco’s bag. “Ronald’s feelings -- they weren’t what I was gauging, though they probably should have been. No, I didn’t wait here for you to talk about Ronald. It’s about me.” She scanned the length of the path. “Can we -- can we sit down?” Still holding onto his bag, she was leading him to the stone stairs, sitting on them herself.

He sat next to her, prying his bag out of her fingers. “Leave it,” he said. “I meant it when I said post-game quidditch uniforms aren’t very nice. You shouldn’t come in contact with mine.”

She raised her eyebrows, trying to put the thought of coming in contact with his quidditch uniform out of her mind. She bent at the waist until her chin rested on her knees, saying nothing.

“Granger,” he prodded. “This stone is freezing cold. What is it you want to know?”

She sat up. “You don’t kiss like Viktor Krum.”

His heart crashed in his chest, but all he did was nod and ask, “Why would I?”

“Is Viktor terrible at it? Is that it?”

Draco shouted out a short, dry laugh. “How should I know?” The laugh died. “Wait -- if he’s not, does that mean that I’m terrible at it?”

“See, that’s just it,” she said. “I don’t know how you compare to other people. I -- oh, for the love of Boggarts -- I can’t look you in the face and say it.” She turned herself away from him, so he was looking at the back of her head again. “I liked kissing you more than I liked kissing Viktor. A lot more.” Her face fell into her hands as she whimpered to herself. “So I kissed Ronald to see if Viktor was just -- bad. Kissing Ronald was supposed to feel like kissing you, so I could conclude that Viktor had just been -- well, not right for me.”

Draco blew out his breath as Hermione groaned to herself, still not turning around. Was she ever going to finish explaining? He gave her a light shove, his hand on her elbow. “Ronald was supposed to be the same as me, you say. He was supposed to show you what an average kiss was like, and it’s supposed to be like me.”

She nodded.

He waited but she kept silent. “Well?” he said himself. “What happened?”

She turned around, somewhat frantic but no longer flustered. “What happened is I botched the experimental design. I failed to control for enough of the variables to make a fair comparison. If my experiment was a potion, it would have blown up in my face.” She was tying her hair back, as if about to set to work. “Because the circumstances in which I kissed Ronald were nothing like those in which I -- in which you kissed me.”

“I kissed you?”

“Yes, you did.”

He sputtered for a moment. “Yes, well, I still had to all but wrestle your arms from around my neck to get you to stop kissing me back after Montague had gone.”

“This -- this is why I did not want you to talk,” she said. “Now, what I do want from you is to recreate my kiss with Ronald in every way except for having an audience. That’s impossible -- “

“You’ve got that right -- “

“But the rest of it -- I think we could recreate the rest of it, right here.” She was opening her bag, rifling through it, pulling out props: a quidditch keeper’s helmet, an empty cereal bowl, a spoon. “Come on, Malfoy.”

“Why is this necessary?”

“It’s research, ” she said. “Sane, well-considered, well-executed research. If I do a little controlled kissing, I can figure it out without making a slag out of myself.” She moved to put the keeper’s helmet on him. “Ronald was wearing something like this when it happened. It’s not the most handsome garment so of course it would have been dampening things between us when I -- “

Draco caught her hand. “You’re going to kiss me because you’re dying to prove to yourself you feel nothing for me, the way you felt nothing for Ronald at breakfast this morning. Even though -- ”

She yanked her hand away. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about Ronald and me.”

They sat on the stone step, glaring at each other until Draco shrugged and took the helmet from her. “I don’t,” he said, working the crown of his head into the leather cage. “Who cares? What’s next?”

She nodded when Draco’s angel-hair disappeared from view. “Good. Now, I’m very sensitive to smells, and so recreating that will be vital,” she said, dropping a dry rolled oat into the empty bowl and swirling her wand over it, spinning it into a thick grey gruel. “Ronald was trying to eat a bowl of oatmeal. Take it.”

She pressed the bowl into Draco’s hands. “Hold it up to your face, Malfoy, so I can smell it on you when I come near. In fact, you’d better take a few bites.”

He nipped gingerly at the tip of the spoon she’d given him. “Ugh, it’s awful,” he said.

“Sorry, I didn’t bring any milk or sugar.”

“That’s all I can eat of it, Granger.”

“Good enough,” she said. “As for the rest, we’re sat side by side instead of standing face to face this time. It’s daylight. No one has been chasing us. All of this is right. Oh, and Ronald was in a horrible mood when I did it, just like you are right now.”

“Just do it then” Draco said, flicking a spoonful of oats into the thicket.

“I can’t do it on command,” she said. “I took Ronald by surprise. That’s another crucial element. Just look into your oatmeal and think about something that upsets you.”

He scoffed. “Great. The possibilities are endless. Something that upsets me, something other than what we’re doing right n-- “

There was warm, sweet pressure on Draco’s cheek, faintly wet, and arms encircling his arm, tugging him slightly downward. 

And then it was gone. 

Hermione was still beside him. He could sense her in his peripheral vision, hear her breathing, but she was saying nothing.

Draco cleared his throat. “That was exactly how you did it? This morning with Ronald?”

“Pretty much,” she squeaked.

“With the,” he said, “with the same -- um -- humming sound and everything?”

She gasped. “You heard that?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Kind of like a moan.”

She slapped his arm with the flat of her hand. “It was not.”

“Whatever it was, did you do it that way with Ronald or not?” he asked.

She threw her hands up. “I don’t think I did. I certainly wouldn’t have meant to. And even if I had done it, he wouldn’t have heard me in the Great Hall.”

Draco gave a sharp nod. “Right. Do it again. But quietly.”

She took a deep breath, shaking out her hands. “Yes, again. Think about something upsetting.”

“Got it.”

The pressure on his cheek was warmer this time, wetter, and while the contact was harder and tighter at first, it lingered. He felt her mouth soften against him, and she dragged the inner edge of her lip across his skin as she pulled away, his eyelids falling with her downward motion.

And she made the sound again.

“What is that?” Draco nearly shouted, leaping at the chance to break himself out of the stupor that nearly took hold of him as she kissed him.

“I’m sorry,” she was rushing to say, shouting over his voice, wiping her mouth. “It just happens. Here, let me have another go. And I’ll be sure not to lick my lips this time.”

She was already turning toward him, her neck craning to reach his face, her lips slightly parted, her hands reaching for his arm to pull him down to her level again when Draco caught her hands in both of his, pressing them together like stacked parchment.

“No,” he was saying, shaking his head. “No more, Granger. The longer it goes, the less it gets like what happened with Ronald. One more go and, I promise you, it will be nothing at all like it.” 

He was releasing her hands and moving to wrench the helmet off his head.

“Malfoy, wait -- “

“No, I’m leaving now,” he said, still struggling with the helmet. “If you don’t have enough -- enough data to draw a conclusion from this experiment by now, then there’s nothing more I can do for you.” 

She stood up. “Look, if I’ve offended you, I’m sorry.”

“I’m not offended,” he said, finally freeing his head, shaking his hair to stop it from clinging to his forehead. “But I am overcome.”

She had to draw in a sharp breath as he tossed his hair, but she managed to repeat the word, “Overcome?”

“Yes, Granger,” he said, dumping the oatmeal into the grass and scourgifying the bowl and spoon before handing them back to her. “Even with the helmet and the reeking oatmeal and the spectre of my brother hanging over everything, I am still overcome.”

She stood speechless, blinking up at him.

He was groaning now. “By the stars, Granger, how can you not…” He let the question fade. “Look, I’m sorry this wasn’t more helpful for you. But it's all I can do. I need to leave.”

“Malfoy, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

She didn’t stop him this time, as he gathered his bag and trudged up the rest of the steep stone steps, leaving her to repack her experimental apparatus in the middle of the path, alone.

\--------------------------------------

It was an eagle owl, the large speckled bird of prey pecking at Molly Weasley’s kitchen window in the middle of a cold, bright morning. What a ridiculous creature it was, an invasive species imported by humans though it had no business being in Britain at all let alone strutting on the wooden plank window sills of the Burrow. It was the kind of beast that would have chased the pigeons around the owlery at school. Yes, it was a ridiculous creature sent to Molly by a ridiculous person.

She opened the window and took the parchment from its ankle all the same.

Dear Mrs. Weasley,

I do hope you will oblige me with a brief meeting regarding young Ronald and his arrangements for the holidays. It is a simple matter, yet a delicate one which I would keep in strict confidence.

Yours Truly,

L.A. Malfoy

She moved to shoo the owl away without a treat, without a reply, but it stood its ground, pacing and bobbing around her waving hands.

“Oh, have it your own way,” she told it as she hastily wrote a reply on the back of the parchment.

Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy,

Arthur and I would be happy to meet with both of you to discuss Ronald’s holiday plans at a discrete but public place of your choosing anytime outside regular Ministry hours of operation. Please advise.

Regards,

M. and A. Weasley

“There, off with you,” she said as the owl finally left. Molly was about to turn her back to the window when she saw the owl diving behind the stone berm at the edge of the yard instead of soaring off into the western sky.

She swore. He was here. He hadn’t made himself known yet but he was here, somewhere just outside the wall.

“No,” she said aloud, pursing her lips, narrowing her eyes.

She wound up her knitting and reached for her coat and hat. She would floo to London, find Arthur or Bill, and leave Lucius Malfoy to find the house locked and empty. She was watching the yard as she dressed for the weather. With still no further sign of him, there was enough time for her to button her coat, tuck her scarf into her collar --

The doorknob clicked open before a soundless Alohomora spell.

“NO,” she said again, spinning away from the window. “No, Lucius, I will not meet with you without Arthur.”

“Molly, it’s Ronald,” he said, stepping into the vestibule at the foot of the stairwell, his voice barely loud enough for her to hear. “It’s our son. Please.”

“Whose son?” she scoffed. “My son, the one Arthur and I gave to the Ministry in the interest of national peace? Is he hurt? Maimed? Hexed?”

"No," Lucius said, ignoring the rest. "Not yet."

"Then get out."

"Wait, Molly, I need your help," Lucius said in the same low, quiet voice. "Let's not be coy. You know that -- that dark forces are afoot. Draco -- they already have sights set on Draco. I don't know how I'm going to save him. It's none of your concern, of course, but Ronald -- " Lucius's voice broke. "Help me shelter Ronald, keep him away and safe."

Molly dropped her hat. "Safe from who, Lucius?"

He shook his head.

She whipped her scarf from around her neck, throwing it at his feet. "Safe from who? Say it!"

He shook his head again. "I can't cast Ronald off completely. It would be better for him if I could, but Narcissa is in denial about the danger the boys are in and won't allow it. All I ask is that you take him more fully under your protection. Stop the twins from goading him. Plan to have him for Christmas next month just in case…"

His shoulders heaved.

She sighed as she came to stand next to him, laying her hand on his left forearm through his heavy brocade robes. "Lucius, don't go back. Don't answer him. Take Narcissa and the children and run. Leave everything and go. Whatever you lose by going, nothing could be worth the price he demands."

Lucius turned away, his arm moving out of her grip. "Christmas," he said. "Will you have Ronald for the entirety of the holidays?"

"Of course we will," she said. "Draco too if need be."

He lunged across the floor, crushing her to his chest. "Ronald, Molly, tell me he's mine."

"I can't," she said, moved enough by Lucius's nightmare to let him hold her for a moment, knowing he felt in her the hope he once had for a life free from this darkness. It wasn't what he had chosen then, but she hoped something in the warm reality of her form might help him see the promise that still existed of a life free of darkness now. 

When he sensed her permission, he held her closer, whispering into her hair. “Tell me Ronald is my son, my firstborn son.”

She pushed herself away from him now. "No one knows for certain who Ron's father is. It's what Arthur and I have chosen. And it’s better this way."

Lucius dropped his arms.

Molly stood back, drawing herself up as tall as she could. "Here is an image for you to call out of your memory, when the time comes for you to work occulmency on the devil you've sold yourself to. Show him this image of Ronald's mother standing in her humble home telling you that you are in no wise his father."

\----------------------------------

Ronald sat on the table in the vanished room. Between Hermione and Draco, he never felt the need to get his own wrist watch but he wished he had one now. He was almost sure Pansy was late in meeting him. Not that he blamed her. 

How could it all have gone so wrong? Hermione had kissed him for the first time. It was just on the cheek, and just for luck before a match, but it was all he had and it counted for something, surely. But where was the ecstasy, the euphoria? Where was Hermione, for that matter? How did he get to be spending the evening after she kissed him waiting to apologize to another girl?

He was looking at his shoes when Pansy came through the false wall. She stepped inside and stopped.

“Hey-a,” he said, offering his sweetest smile.

She tossed her head, tapping her foot, arms folded.

“You came,” Ronald said, extending a hand. “Now you have to come here. I’m not allowed to stand up from this table. Those are the rules of this room.”

She stepped closer, lifting one eyebrow. “We’re still following rules, are we?” she said. “From the looks of things between you and Granger at breakfast, I assumed you had jumped ahead and didn’t need my guidance anymore.”

“That was completely unexpected,” he said. “And since I wasn’t ready for it, since none of the very important preliminaries you’ve schooled me in were laid down first, it was -- “ He paused, digging deep into his vocabulary to find the right word. “It was lacklustre. My faith in your training is stronger than ever.”

She was fighting a smile. “Is it?”

“Yes.”

Pansy was near enough now that by leaning as far from the table as he could without standing, Ronald could snag her fingers with his. He caught hold of her and pulled her to stand between his knees, their fingers lacing together.

She smirked. “I suppose she’s made you think you’re ready to move on to non-lip facial kissing.”

He shook his head. “Not until you say so, teacher.”

“Well, I don’t say so,” she answered. “There is a lot more to be learned from hand-to-hand contact.”

Without a word, Ronald agreed, the pad of his thumb rubbing a slow, firm line against the skin on the top of her hand, his palm pressed to hers and moving back and forth, like a swaying kiss.

“What makes your hands so soft?” he asked. “It’s downright otherworldly.”

She huffed. “You’re flattering me because you think I’m upset about Granger’s peck this morning.”

“Aren’t you?”

She tugged at her hand, as if she’d like to take it away. “I told you. She is not to be mentioned during our lessons -- “

“It’s some kind of lotion, isn’t it?” Ronald said, changing the subject as ordered. “On your hands.”

“It’s mostly just being a girl,” she said.

But he was raising her hand to his face, sniffing at her skin. “Yeah, but there’s a scent here too. It’s pretty, like flowers. What do actual pansies smell like, anyways?”

“Nothing,” she said, barely able to make a sound as he held her hand beneath his nose, his breath warm on her knuckles. “They smell like nothing.”

“Well they’re not.”

Pansy watched, her heart in her throat, as Ronald Malfoy closed his eyes and pressed his lips to her hand.


	10. Ten

Pansy Parkinson watched, her heart in her throat, as Ronald Malfoy closed his eyes and pressed his lips to the back of her hand. His head was bowed over their intertwined fingers, his mouth warm and soft, but also well-formed and firm as he kissed her. She never suspected the rumors about his vast experience weren't true, but some boys with a lot of kissing experience just ingrained bad habits. Not Ronald. From this kiss on the hand alone, a shiver was running through her, from the backs of her knees racing upward.

She snatched herself free.

“Sorry,” he said, lifting his head from his now empty hand, smiling almost shyly. “Let myself get a little carried away. Could have been worse though.”

“You broke our rules, Ronald Malfoy,” Pansy said, covering her throat to hide the flush rising there, hoping her hand was not visibly shaking.

His shy smile was verging on a smirk. “Come on, Pansy. I had been doing so well. That was my first kiss of the school year and it’s November already. Well, the first one except for at breakfast with Hermione today, but that was all her.”

Pansy scoffed, disgusted, turning in a circle as she stepped to where he couldn’t reach her without standing up from the table.

“Ah, there we go,” Ronald said, nodding smugly whether he knew it or not. “I was a little hurt, you know, when you didn't seem mad about Hermione. I was worried you didn’t actually like me much, even after all the nice times we’ve had together, here and walking around the grounds alone. But look at you now. You do care.”

Pansy crossed her arms, tossed her head. “And that’s what you want, is it? You feel better now that you’ve toyed with my feelings and used another girl to try to wind me up? Is it fun, Ronald?”

He saw his error too late, jumping to his feet, his face blanching. “Pansy, no. I wasn’t playing with your feelings. I was joking -- “

“Hilarious.”

“No, not exactly joking. I was just wondering how much -- “ 

Someone was pushing through the false wall, into the room. It was Harry, tucking the Map back into his pocket, Hermione following close behind. 

“Come along, Ronald,” she was calling over Harry’s shoulder in that maternal tone of hers, barely glancing at Pansy. “We spotted smoke from Hagrid’s chimney. He’s back and needs to be warned about having his class inspected by Umbridge, like all the rest of the teachers.”

“Right.” Ronald nodded at Hermione, but followed Pansy toward the door, his jaw working but not speaking. She was gone before he could say another word.

“Pansy up here making another fire call with Zdravko?” Hermione asked.

Ronald frowned. “What?”

“Her Bulgarian boyfriend?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it’s not looking so good between the two of them. Sad, really.”

Hermione led the way to Hagrid’s hut, her mind working frantically, trying to come up with a lesson plan for Monday’s Care of Magical Creatures class which Umbridge wouldn’t be able to criticize during her inspection. All three of them walked briskly through the darkening evening. The temperature had been plummeting since noon, and the air felt cold and crystalline, like snow.

Walking two metres ahead of the boys, Hermione was thinking harder than ever. Behind her, Ronald nudged Harry with his elbow and asked, “What do you think she meant, this morning before the match, when she kissed my cheek and told me good luck?”

Harry laughed, more like a snort. “Oh, I dunno, maybe ‘good luck’?”

“Come on, Harry,” Ronald groaned. “Besides that. Was it, like, a signal or something? A sign that it might be alright now for things to -- to change between us? She’s sixteen. Maybe she’s ready.”

“Look,” Harry said, “I always knew this was coming -- since second year, really. So I’ve had loads of time to decide what I’d do about it. And in all that time, I’ve decided that what I’d do is nothing.”

“Harry -- “

“What? You’re both my best friends and if you want to risk getting all romantic, I can’t be involved. Sorry. Sort it out amongst yourselves.”

Ronald heaved a great sigh as he watched Hermione’s back, her hair bouncing ahead of them.

He really was lost, and Harry almost felt sorry. “What’s the good of asking me anyway?” Harry said, returning the elbow nudge. “What do I know about kissing?”

The boys were laughing then, shoving each other along the path, Ronald cheering Harry, pressing him with advice on how to wind up alone with Cho Chang and find out a thing or two about kissing.

Ahead of them, Hermione’s mind was not as focused on Hagrid’s lesson plan as the boys may have imagined. She fought to concentrate but kept drifting away, distracted by thoughts from her meeting with Draco Malfoy earlier in the day, revisiting things he’d said that needed further explanation.

There was, “If you want a line on whether Ronald fancies you or not, ask him yourself, Granger. Or send Potter. Send anyone but me.”

And then, “The longer it goes, the less it gets like what happened with Ronald. One more go at kissing my cheek and, I promise you, it will be nothing at all like it.”

And last of all, “I am overcome.”

When she backed away, after kissing Draco’s cheek a second time, his eyes had been closed. Overcome -- he had declined her apology for making him feel overcome but he definitely seemed angry. Or perhaps not. She had yelled back at him each time he’d raised his voice to her, but she hadn’t been angry herself. Her emotions had been fully engaged but not in anything like rage. What would it be called instead? She needed to think. 

Pushing herself back into the moments she’d spent sitting next to Draco on the stairs, she remembered that her blood had been rushing, and her breath had been coming fast, and her hands had been hot in spite of the weather, and her skin had felt electrified, and he had been so beautiful and magnetic even in a keeper’s helmet that she could hardly look directly at him. 

And he had been almost cute when they’d sparred over bowtruckles, and he hadn’t expected her to talk about quidditch, and he’d listened to her ridiculous scheme and helped her with it, and cleaned the porridge from the dishes before he handed them back to her, and all the while he was careful with his brother’s feelings, and he was indeed best in potions in their year, and --

By the stars, kissing him, even when it was only on the cheek, was nothing, nothing, nothing like kissing anyone else. Not Ronald, not Viktor, no one. Idiotic as it was, she fancied Draco Malfoy -- fancied him rotten and to the exclusion of every other boy she knew.

She shivered inside her cloak. It wouldn’t do. It would not do at all. She was on her feet, in the cold, on her way to try to save Hagrid from Umbridge’s attack on his teaching. It was an attack Draco Malfoy would not only be cheering but fueling. No, Draco Malfoy was not someone she should be longing for. Not her, Hermione Granger. She was master of her own life and she would master this too. Somehow…

For now she spun around to face Harry and Ronald. “Hurry up, slow coaches,” she sang back at them. She looked them both over, passing quickly over Harry’s face, settling longer on Ronald’s. He returned her look with a gravity she’d seldom seen in him outside of a chess match. It was the look he had in the moment of decision, before reaching out a hand to move a piece.

Ronald was still looking at her as he broke into a run, linking an arm through hers as he caught her.

\-----------------------

There was a notice board kept in the Slytherin common room charmed to spare Professor Snape the bother of having to go amongst the students to communicate with them. When he wanted a word with a student, their name would flash on the board in curving green luminous script. Draco had just seen his name appear. He was now outside the door of Snape’s office, knocking. At the touch of his hand to the wood, a parchment drifted down from the dark ceiling above his head. This was the message. And it wasn’t from Snape, but from his father.

The note told Draco that Hagrid had just returned from a dark and dangerous mission to contact the giants on the continent, in the north, and draw them into the looming conflict in Britain. It was grim news. Dumbledore was expert at making himself the image of something sweet and silly, when all the while he was trawling the forests and ditches for giants and werewolves to come teach at the school, bringing their restless hordes with them.

Draco, his father explained, needed to reprise an old role of his, picking up where they’d left off trying to get Hagrid removed from Hogwarts, especially now that he was in contact with his giant mother’s people. Hagrid had made himself a danger not just to Hogwarts but the entire wizarding world. 

Something had to be done. If Draco could succeed in highlighting Hagrid’s weaknesses during Umbridge’s inspection, it was possible he could be removed, stopped. Once again, Umbridge was the answer, the sweet evil voice of the Ministry doing Draco’s father’s dirty work -- that is, the parts of his dirty work Draco hadn’t been called upon to do himself.

On the stairs outside Snape’s office, Draco bowed his head over the parchment, sick. It would be another week of making a show of himself toadying to Umbridge. And he wouldn’t be harassing a clever, experienced teacher like Hermione’s dear old McGonagall, but a new teacher with unconventional methods who Hermione was willing to fight for -- willing to fight him for. 

Things were bad enough already but there was still one more paragraph left to read in the message. It was odd, the tone falsely casual, the words vague mentions of the holidays. It was something like a warning that urgent matters might call Lucius and Narcissa out of the country at Christmas, and the boys might wind up spending their entire holidays somewhere other than home for the first time in their lives. They had missed Christmas Day for the Yule Ball last year, but it had just meant Narcissa had made the second half of the holidays extra festive. There would be none of that this time.

Draco’s head drooped between his knees. Christmas and New Years at Malfoy Manor were legendary, highlights of the year for people who weren’t even members of their family. And now there might be nothing. And what did his father mean by the boys spending the break “elsewhere”? Where was that? Aunt Bella was in prison, Aunt Andromeda was disowned, Lucius was an only child with no close relatives to send them to. There was no one left in Britain to take them. Unless…

No, they couldn’t mean that. Their father could not mean to send them both to have Christmas with Ronald’s scruffy biological family in that cramped, wreck of a house. Wasn’t that where Potter always spent his holidays too?

Draco stood up, crumpling the parchment in his fist. Ronald could go to the Weasleys. He would do alright. But Draco would stay at school. At least that way he could get some work done. That’s how he would convince his parents not to force him, if it came to that.

Back in the corridor, outside Slytherin house, he found Pansy coming back from meeting Ronald in the vanished room. She looked stormy, the personification of the bad weather coming in over the lake. 

They stopped in front of each other, mirroring one another’s mood. Draco felt a little like he might want to hit Ronald, and since he wasn’t going to, he looked for a little satisfaction in asking after whether Pansy had punished him for the breakfast kiss from Hermione.

“I didn’t mean to, but he wouldn’t let it alone and I told him off in the end,” she said.

“The end? So have you finished with him?” Draco asked. “Put a stop to whatever that was going on between you?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. Probably.”

“Lucky you,” Draco said, “to be over it.”

Pansy laughed, loud and bitter, her voice echoing up the hard stairs and walls. “Oh, I am not over it. Not at all. In fact, I have never liked Ronald better. And that is precisely why I can’t keep it up.”

\----------------------------

Undermining Hagrid’s class on Monday morning was only too easy. It was hardly even sporting. Between Umbridge and Draco, Hagrid was put to such a thorough routing that Ronald called Draco on it with a snowball to the back of the head on their way back to the castle.

The entire class stopped, knee-deep in their snowy tracks, waiting to see if the Malfoys would fight for them. Draco returned the snowball hit, striking Ronald in the chest instead of the face. It was a de-escalation, a sign that he knew he deserved it, but the rest of the crowd didn’t know how to read the brothers’ signs. 

Without siblings of their own to teach them, Harry and Hermione couldn’t read them either, and Harry threw himself between them, shouting. “No, Ronald. If you’re caught fighting again, you’ll be banned from quidditch along with the rest of us.”

Ronald scoffed, jerking his chin toward Draco. “Like he cares. You’d love the both of us to get banned, wouldn’t you Draco?”

It didn’t take long for the crowd to get cold and bored enough to leave off gawking and go back to their trudging up the hill. The Malfoys weren’t going to fight but they were going to have a keenly unpleasant conversation. Ronald waved Harry and Hermione away while Draco dried the melting snow from his hands on his cloak.

“What was that all about?” Ronald asked him. “I know you’ve never liked Hagrid but today -- you were right out of order, even for you.”

“Because it’s not me,” Draco burst. “It’s Dad. He’s on Umbridge’s side.”

Ronald frowned. “Why in the world?”

Draco drew in a huge breath, words bursting out of him as if through a broken dam. “Because she’s the Ministry, of course. And the Ministry is doing what Dad and the rest of them want it to right now. So I have to help. I mean -- obviously. Why do I have to take a snowball in the head and explain this to you. Aren’t you supposed to be Mother’s darling little chess puppy, the strategist? Brilliant strategy, Ronald, closing your eyes and whistling through all Dad’s schemes so you won’t have to answer for them. Absolutely brilliant, hoping to pass yourself off as more of a pet than a son -- “

The rant ended, cutting dead at the word “son.” Ronald’s face was white, his eyes enormous, bright and glistening. Without a word he turned away, stomping back to the castle.

Draco let out a strangled cry. “Ronald, no,” he said, running behind him through the snow. “No, that’s not what I said. You know I don’t believe -- . You know -- “

“I know that you’re the son and heir and I am the foundling, the life sentence, the pet. Yes, I know.”

“Will you shut up, Ronald. I never said -- “

“No, you don’t have to,” Ronald finished. “I will let Mother know you brought it up though.”

“What do you want from me?” Draco was shouting again. “You want me to stand here and testify about how adored and equal we are? You want to call the crowd back so I can make a brotherly love confession? That’s one way to keep me in my place.”

Ronald stopped. “Your place,” he snarled. When he turned back to Draco, Ronald had that look again -- the one from the chess game, right before a move. “I’ve been wrestling with something for weeks, Draco, and you’ve finally pushed me to do it. I’m starting a new experiment. One I cannot do without your help and you ARE going to help me. There will be no girls involved, but it did come to mind from something girls have to say about us, the brothers Malfoy.”

Draco flinched when Ronald tapped the end of his nose. 

“It was Pansy who came up with it, honestly,” Ronald said. “Smart girl. Not given nearly enough credit. I was explaining my love potion theory to her and she assumed I was trying to say the love potion accident happened not between Molly and Arthur Weasley.” His mouth turned into the smug but guarded smile he used just before announcing “check.” “But between Molly and our own dad.”

Draco laughed, bitterly and wickedly, bending at the waist. “You don’t believe that.”

“At this point, I don’t know what to believe.”

“Well, if you believe that, then you’re an idiot,” Draco said. “It’s not possible. Imagine Dad having Mother waiting at home, and then he goes off and gets himself love potioned by -- ”

“Watch your mouth,” Ronald snapped. “And listen. I’ll keep on working with Pansy to see if I’m damaged by a love potion. That is, if she’ll let me. And I’m not letting go of Hermione either. I think she and I may be on the verge of something. But even if I do alright with the girls, this issue of who my father is will stay the same.”

Draco was shaking his head. “No. If you can connect with a girl the way you want to it proves Dad wasn’t with Molly Weasley because there’s no way they were ever even a little bit in love,” he argued.

Ronald shrugged. “You know I’m a loyal son and I adore our father. But his past is nothing if not sorted and surprising. Even you have to admit that, Draco. And since the topic of what kind of son I am has come up so conveniently just now, here in the snow, you’ve already made yourself part of this. There must be a potion out there that can show us who my father is.”

Draco barked a laugh, miserable as ever. “How would I know?”

Ronald shrugged. “You can find out. You have to. I won’t pretend I have the potion skills to do it myself, so I am calling on you, Draco, to help me.” Ronald was standing taller, taking on the same grand posture everyone assumed when demanding some immense act of service from Draco. “I am calling on you to help me as my brother -- maybe as my real brother, truly related to me, by blood.”

\--------------------------

The sooner Draco proved that Ronald was the biological offspring of Molly Prewett and Arthur Weasley, the sooner he could stop being furious at Ronald for suggesting anything otherwise. It meant he spent a frigid November night not in front of the fire in his common room, but in the library, behind the rope of the restricted section, searching for a formula for a paternity potion. 

The books were littered with passages in runes, slow going as he kept referring to dictionaries and grammars to interpret them. Draco was exhausted and cross even before he lowered his hands from rubbing at his eyes and found Hermione Granger standing across the table from him.

“Ronald says I’m not to fight with you about what you did in Hagrid’s class this morning,” she said. “Even though you deserve to be fought with over it.”

Draco sighed and stood up to re-shelf a book even though Pince hated when they did that. 

With his back turned to her, Hermione rifled through the sliding pile of books he’d been reading. She scoffed. “You’re looking up the runes word by word? Pathetic, Malfoy. Just take a runes class.”

“There isn’t enough time in the day, obviously,” he said. “And my father wants me in Divination, with Trelawney.”

“Your father, your father,” she chided.

“Can I help you with something?” he said, rounding on her. “So you can get what you need and leave me in peace?”

“I’m not here for you,” Hermione said, dropping his runes dictionary back onto the table. “My Protean charm isn’t quite right yet. Trust me, I'd rather not be in here. I thought I had returned that book for the last time, but here I am, fishing it out again.”

Draco extended his hand. “Let’s see it. The charm.”

She shrunk away, her hand sinking into the pocket of her skirt, clutching something there.

“Keep your secrets if you like, Granger,” Draco said. “But I grew up literally cradled in the arms of a Protean charm, didn’t I? And you shouldn’t work on problems like this alone for too long. It makes for tunnel vision. Keeps obvious solutions out of sight. You know that.”

She did know it. Letting out a breath, she walked around the table, standing close to him to show him a galleon she’d taken from her pocket. “It heats to alert the bearer exactly like it’s supposed to. That was easy,” she said. “But I’m trying to charm it to show simple, readable messages. It’s tricky and not quite right.”

He took the galleon from her, careful to keep their skin from coming into contact as he did so. “How are you trying to get the messages to display themselves?”

“In a basic black ink,” she said. “It's not fancy, but there’s something about the metallurgical connection between the gold and the liquid ink that’s too unstable. The ink just runs out and makes for a bunch of dirty laundry.”

“Of course it does. Don’t introduce a second modality,” Draco said. “No ink. Stick to the heat. Use the heat that’s already there to melt the message into the metal.”

“Molten letters?” she said. “But that uses so much energy. It’s dangerous. Someone could get scorched.”

He shrugged. “Danger is the only thing that works.”

She was thinking it over, standing close to him, tilting her head to look at him, as if his face was a focal point that let her mind break into something new.

He looked back at her, eye to eye, speaking softly. “He’s bringing giants back into Britain. You know that, don’t you?”

She blinked, her mouth opening, and then closing again.

He went on. “It’s incredibly reckless. Someone has to do something. In a densely populated, civilized society like ours, like the British Muggles’ -- it’s too dangerous,” he said, his voice almost a whisper, quiet enough that he bent lower, to where she was sure to hear him.

Her smile was sad. “Danger is the only thing that works.”

In the silence, he slipped the galleon into the pocket of her robe. She saw him swallow. He leaned his forehead against hers. “It’s your turn to start it,” he said.

She shook her head, rolling along the curve of his forehead. “It’s not. I started it on the stairs.”

“That was just on the cheek.”

“But it was twice. Might have kept it up for hours if you hadn’t -- “

Through arguing, Draco broke through the centimetres of space between them and kissed her. She lunged closer, backing him against the oldest, most precious books in the library’s collection. She resisted the pull of his hair and slid her hands up his chest, her fingertips curved over his clavicle. 

The heat, the risk still hummed between them but they weren’t strangers to each other this time, and they were alone, able to attend to each other properly. His hand cradled her jaw, his fingers splayed across her cheek, fine-tuning the connection of their mouths to something that had to be close to perfection. The curves and contours of her mouth fit into his so completely, so naturally even as he pushed deeper, past where he’d ventured before, coming further into her mouth with his.

There was her voice again, sweet and high, making her desire for him into something he could hear. It was not a library sound, and maybe that was why she said into his mouth, “We have to stop.”

His own voice was low and hoarse, his lips still moving against hers as he answered. “I’ll stop as soon as you do.”

And her hand was on the back of his head, pressing him down, holding him close, alarmed he might actually stop.

On the other side of the shelves separating the restricted room from the rest of the library, a chair leg scraped against the floor. It sounded like damage and they broke apart, Hermione’s eyes darting around, watching for Madam Pince. Draco straightened his posture and leaned away from the bookcase, but couldn’t yet move or speak.

Hermione cleared her throat. “No second modality in the Protean charm,” she said in a normal speaking voice. “Right. That might be it. Thank you, Malfoy. I won’t be needing any books from here after all. So then I’ll just -- just be going.”


	11. Eleven

Once the Protean charmed galleons were perfected and given out to members of the DA, Harry Potter’s secret extracurricular defense classes were in full swing. The classes gave Harry hope, vigour, a new focus for his time and energy. It was a good thing, and it kept him from missing quidditch nearly so much. 

And in the same way, it should have invigorated Hermione and Ronald, keeping them from missing their usual activities. Ronald shouldn’t have been missing his meetings with Pansy Parkinson in the vanished room, and Hermione shouldn’t have been missing sharing the restricted section of the library with Draco Malfoy as he searched for a paternity potion for Ronald.

Only, that was not how things went at all.

Ronald had tried to set things right with Pansy. He strutted and posed around her in classes and corridors, waiting for her to flash him that look he’d grown to crave -- that shameless look of being delighted to be in his presence. It was gone. When he found her eyes on him now, she looked vexed, maybe even angry. 

One night, he’d check the prefects’ schedule and waited in a niche behind the statue of a one-eyed witch for Pansy to come patrolling along the corridor. He’d whistled and grabbed at her hand, pulling her into the shadows with him.

“Don’t be mad anymore, Parkinson. I still need your help,” he’d said as she withdrew her hand from his, folding her arms over her chest. “Please. I was just starting to hope, just starting to feel like I was getting close to a connection.”

“Close?” she’d said. “Close to a connection with who?”

He’d sputtered. “With -- with girls.”

She’d pursed her lips, nodding. “With girls. Girls in general. All of us. Interchangeably.”

“Well, that was kind of...” he’d said, trailing off, confused, blinking quickly. “That was kind of the point of all this -- wasn’t it?”

Pansy’s arms were still folded across her chest as she stepped into him, nudging Ronald ever so gently against the wall behind him. He’d yielded, stepping back, pinned. In the small space, there was nothing to correct for their height difference. Pansy had tilted her neck, her chin lifted, a pretty angle from which he’d regarded her with wide, dark eyes in the low light. 

“So you’d like us to complete the lessons,” she went on. “Meeting alone in the enchanted room where I’d let you have more and more of me. Let you run your hands up and down my arms and shoulders, touch my back and sides, maybe my neck. Our fingers in each other’s hair...”

He was fighting not to twitch, caught between the cold stone wall and her warm, soft forearms pressed against his stomach.

“Until finally, I’d close my eyes, wet my lips,” she said, rising on her tiptoes, leaning into him to keep her balance, “and open up to kiss you properly. Is that it, Ronald?”

He was bending lower, as if caught in a gravitational field centred in the small girl before him. He rasped out the words, “That’s what -- isn’t that what -- we agreed?”

She’d hummed as he came closer, his mouth slightly open. She said, “And at the end of the lessons, we would connect, like you want to, proving there’s been no prenatal love potion accident curse for you. Then you’d be free to shake my hand, send me on my way, and roll it out for real for Hermione Granger.”

He stopped, his heavy eyelids lifting.

“Hermione Granger,” she said again, each syllable drawn out long.

He said nothing, snapping his jaws together.

“That’s what I thought,” she said, backing away even as he stepped forward without thinking, driven to keep from losing the heat and pressure of her arms against his stomach.

But she’d turned her back to him, walking away, down the corridor, alone.

“Pansy,” he called after her.

She waved a hand. “I’m on duty, Ronald. Pull yourself together and get back to the tower before you miss curfew. Goodnight.”

For her part, Hermione was every bit as surly and frustrated as Ronald. It was clear that Draco was actively helping Umbridge enforce her ridiculous rule disbanding all student groups. She’d even tried to cancel the quidditch teams. What ending quidditch had to do with keeping giants out of Britain Hermione could not tell. The teams were soon reinstated, but watching Draco and the Slytherins trotting around the school enabling Umbridge was chilling.

Pansy had started working with Umbridge on the crackdown on student groups as well. And Hermione noticed that she’d stopped visiting the vanished room, leading Hermine to ask Ronald if Pansy and Zdravko had finally given up on their Bulgaria-to-Britain long distance relationship. Ronald was quite grave as he cleared his throat, squared his shoulders, and admitted they had moved on, and Zdravko had taken it surprisingly hard.

She’d never even met this Zdravko boy, but Hermione felt sorry for him all the same. It was sad, fancying someone and having them like you too only to realize the affair was doomed. 

Doomed.

Maybe, Hermione thought, everything Draco had done to get closer to her this year had nothing to do with him liking her and everything to do with him using her to find out about the DA and stop it. Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to manipulate and betray his brother, but snogging secrets out of her was something Draco was only too prepared to do.

As winter grew colder over the next two weeks, Hermione stayed away from him -- not so far away that she couldn’t see Draco, but too far for touching. That is, except for the time he stood too close behind her in the tussle in the potions supply cupboard and breathed, “Still your turn, Granger,” into her ear.

Her face had flushed and she’d sloshed essence of eglantine thorn all over her hand, but she’d managed not to spin around and to throw herself into his arms right there in the potions lab. His voice against her ear had been ragged, eager almost to the point of suffering. Why would it matter that he had an ulterior motive?

Stop -- of course it mattered. The DA was too important and fragile to risk.

This was the frayed state Ronald and Hermione were in the day Harry came back late from the final DA meeting before Christmas holidays, beaming foolishly after kissing Cho Chang. It lifted their spirits to be congratulating him, laughing as he tried to express how his first kiss felt, how it made him feel. Ronald was interested in a clinical report, factual with body parts labeled, textures and timing tabulated. Hermione helped decode the emotional aspects of it.

Ronald listened, amazed as she explained the complicated love triangle Harry was caught up in with Cho and with Cedric Diggory unwittingly still interfering from the great beyond. Pansy Parkinson had inadvertently convinced Ronald that her ability to understand feelings and connections was special. Maybe it was something all girls could do, or at least the smart ones.

As they talked, the common room emptied, the fire burnt low. Ronald was glaring at Harry, jerking his head toward the stairwell to the boys’ dormitory. Harry coughed and rose to excuse himself, leaving Ronald and Hermione alone.

Hermione’s posture stiffened as she watched Harry leave.

Ronald extended his arm along the back of the sofa behind her, but her spine was locked so rigidly straight she didn’t seem to notice. “Nice to see him happy for a change, isn’t it?” he said, nodding at Harry’s feet disappearing up the spiral stairs.

She swayed over her knitting. “I suppose so, though Cho Chang? She’s a bit of a handful. All that crying isn’t normal. She should really be seeing a grief counselor or something. But maybe this infatuation will distract them both.”

“Grief counselor?” Ronald repeated.

“Yes, Ronald,” she said in that motherly tone. “It’s a Muggle occupation. They’re better at confronting their trauma than wizards are, which isn’t saying much. But at least they actually talk about things -- good and bad.”

He hummed, nodding behind her. “Hey, Hermione, can we talk about something?”

“Of course we can,” she said, a little too flatly.

“Harry, he’s like a brother to you, isn’t he?”

“Well, I can’t know for sure, since I have no literal brothers,” she said. “But I imagine he must be.”

“Right,” Ronald said, falling quiet again. “What about me? I mean, you don’t feel like Ginny does to me. So, for you -- it’s not brotherly with me, is it?”

She clenched her knitting, pivoting to read his face in the dimness. How was she supposed to answer? He was Draco’s brother, and Draco was not at all brotherly to her. What did that make Ronald then? Brother-in-law-ly? She certainly couldn’t tell him that. She lobbed the question back at him. “What are you trying to say, Ronald?”

He set his elbows on his knees, leaning forward, his eyes on the embers in the fireplace. “Way back in second year, you were petrified and it completely gutted me. And didn’t we row in front of everyone, at the Yule Ball, when you were mad at me for not inviting you, and I was annoyed that you went with Krum?"

She scoffed. "Annoyed? Jealous, more like."

"Exactly,” he said, admitting it out loud for the first time. "And then this year, at the opening of quidditch season, you kissed me for luck.“

She bowed her head into the little woolen hat in her hands. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed -- “

“No, you didn’t. Of course you didn’t. It was sweet. And the fact is, everyone’s been saying it since second year, Hermione. Just ask Harry, or anyone. They’ll say that you and me,” he took a deep breath before blurting the rest, “we’re going to end up like Harry and Cho. Together.”

She’d turned away again. He couldn’t see her face but he did watch her shoulders heave.

“We’re not like them yet,” Ronald went on. “I know we’re not together -- not in that way, snogging and crying. But if it’s just a matter of time, maybe we should start -- I dunno -- working up to it, so we get it right.”

She twisted her yarn around her needles. “Working up to it. What a beautiful speech, Ronald.”

“Well, how should I say it?“

“Say what? What are you asking of me?” she said. “You’re not asking me to date you -- “

“No, not right away,” he rushed. “I mean, that’s the intention, the ultimate goal of all this. But arriving at that kind of connection -- it’s important to me. Fateful, even. So much that I’d like to go about it deliberately. Properly. You know.”

She answered with a gentle snort. “You’re playing me like a game of chess, planning and plotting four or five moves in advance.”

He laughed softly. “If this was chess, I’d keep my plans to myself. In chess, you don’t go off and tell the other players what you’re up to.”

“You mean the other player, singular,” she said. “There's never more than one other player in a chess game, unless I'm much mistaken.”

It was too dark for her to see the rush of redness in his face. Pansy. Was Hermione hinting that she knew about what he was getting up to with Pansy up until a few weeks before? Or was she warning him she fancied someone else too?

Too? What was he thinking? No, this was a two-player game. No more. And those players were himself and Hermione. She was still talking. He had to set the image of Pansy’s little upturned face out of his mind and listen to Hermione.

“And that other chess player,” she said, “is the one called your opponent.”

Thank the stars for the chess metaphor. It focused his attention like nothing else. He took a deep breath, willing himself to stay calm, and to trust Pansy’s training. He shifted along the sofa, drawing closer to Hermione without touching her, only looking at her, his eyes on hers, letting moments pass in silence as he just looked. And with complete sincerity, he said, “Hermione, in spite of all the bickering between us, you might be the last person I’d ever consider my opponent.”

Quite unexpectedly, her pulse gave a little surge, and she looked back at him, their faces close and wide open to each other.

“All I’m asking,” he was saying, “is that you leave your mind open to the possibility of the two of us together. Start feeling around your life for it. And understand that my mind is open to it as well. Not just my mind, actually, but my heart too.”

She broke the line of sight between their eyes, laughing but not derisively.

He laughed as well. “What? Was that too sappy?”

“A little,” she said, still smiling. 

“Sorry,” he smirked. “Just -- try thinking about you and me as us. Alright? Don’t change anything in the way we act or how you treat me. But give the idea some space in your mind. Yeah?”

She let out another noisy breath. He wasn’t asking for much. She needed to forget Draco anyway. And it’s not like the same thought hadn’t occurred to her many times since she’d looked up in the girls’ bathroom and seen him fighting a troll for her in first year. “Yes, alright, Ronald. I’ll think about it. But don’t expect a kiss before every quidditch match. That was impulsive, and possibly a mistake.”

“Bloody right it was a mistake,” he said. “You missed my mouth by a mile.”

\----------------------------

Ronald went to sleep forcing himself to think about Hermione, congratulating himself on pushing that relationship forward, however minutely. He knew he was moving it toward something that would annoy his father, but Lucius would tolerate a lot as long as Ronald stayed here, watching from the bed next to the Boy Who Lived.

According to a very put out Draco, he would be spending all of the holidays with Harry at the Weasleys’ house. Ronald tossed in his bed at the thought of his real parents leaving the manor for Christmas and not bringing him and Draco along with them. To make it worse, Draco had already declared he’d rather stay at school than go to the Burrow. The boys hadn’t spent Christmas apart since they were infants, and the thought was sickening. 

When their parents owled about it, they wrote of Christmas away from home in easy, casual terms, but it was unprecedented, alarming. Lucius had been scheming away at something most of Ronald’s life and this missed Christmas had the same feel as those moments -- like the time Ronald and Draco were sent separately to the quidditch World Cup, the night all hell broke loose. Ronald wasn’t sure his father had anything to do with the fires and the upside-down Muggles and the Dark Mark in the sky, but he was almost sure he’d seen Draco’s white head, watching it all through a fence as Ronald fled with the Weasley children through the trees.

Lucius kept the two streams of his life separated -- the one flowing from his Death Eater past and the one flowing from the ginger boy sent by the courts to soften his heart and reform him. Ronald was glad for it.

There were a few other moments in the past that brought the separation into particularly sharp focus. There was the time in the bookstore, when Lucius first met Harry. Draco had been needling Harry when the Weasleys kids got involved in Harry’s defense. Then their father, who’d already had a few drinks with Hermione’s parents, waded into it. 

Arthur Weasley was an odd figure in Ronald’s life, benevolent but ill-fitting. At heart, Arthur was a good person. Ronald knew that. Frankly, it might have been easier for Ronald if he wasn’t. It was beautiful, really, that he had stepped in to watch over poor fatherless Harry when Draco picked on him in the bookshop. Harry deserved a champion -- not that Ronald wasn’t about to punch Draco in the stomach and shut him up himself when Arthur stuck his oar in.

He could still see it all in his head, Arthur leaving Tim and Ann Granger standing in a corner as he came forward, red-faced and loose jawed from his visit to the pub, intent on nipping a row developing between the children. If only Dad hadn’t been there...

“Well, well, well -- Lucius Malfoy,” Arthur had said when he spotted him coming to Draco’s side.

Arthur dropped his hand on Harry’s shoulder. Ronald had been relieved Arthur hadn’t chosen his shoulder to take hold of, but also a little sad. Whenever his fathers met, they were forced to choose between two options. They could fall into the cold civility they favoured in matters that involved cooperating for Ronald’s sake. But at times like this, when they disagreed, they could only confront one another if they acted as if Ronald did not exist. And as he watched them in the bookshop, Ronald felt himself fading away.

“Arthur,” said Lucius, nodding coldly.

“Busy time at the manor, I hear,” said Arthur. “All those goods to dispose of. I hope Borgin is giving you a fair price. What’s the use of redeeming yourself from being a disgrace to the name of wizard if you can’t recoup some of your losses?”

Lucius held his expression unflinching, but his cheeks flushed pink. “We have a very different idea of what disgraces the name of wizard, Weasley,” he said.

“Clearly,” said Arthur. He glanced protectively at the Muggle Grangers, both of whom had pulled a book off the nearest shelf to them and were humming questions into the pages.

Lucius nodded toward them, lifting an eyebrow. “Nervous about the company you keep, Weasley? Afraid of your family’s messy status might sink ever lower?”

Arthur’s voice was low itself, racing, almost too gruff to be understood. But Ronald heard him say, “It can never sink any lower than it did the day you -- “

He didn’t finish, his voice lost in the sound of a thud of metal. Ginny’s cauldron went flying as Arthur threw himself at Lucius, knocking him backwards into a bookshelf. Dozens of heavy spellbooks came thundering down on their heads. 

There was a yell of, “Get him, Dad!” from Fred and George. 

Molly had spotted them and was now shrieking, a hand on each of them as they scuffled. “No, Arthur -- Lucius, stop!” 

But the sound of her voice inflamed them, Arthur grunting louder as he took Lucius by the collar and thrust the back of his head against the bookshelf a second time, Lucius baring his fine white teeth as he threw a hand heavy with rings.

The crowd surged backwards, knocking more shelves over as the shop clerks called for calm. It was Hagrid who pulled Ronald’s fathers apart. Arthur had a cut lip and Lucius had been hit in the eye by an encyclopedia of toadstools.

Spinning away with a swirl of his cloak, Lucius left the shop, not looking back, Draco following. Arthur was apologizing to Molly, who was near tears, while being congratulated by the twins and Ginny, Harry looking on, not exactly grinning but extremely satisfied all the same. Arthur’s adoring crowd bore him outside, back toward the pub and the dirty floos that would take them home.

Ronald stayed where he was, standing in the shop as the clerks shook their heads and sighed, straightening shelving and re-sorting stacks of books, tutting at creases in the new covers. Ronald walked to the window and watched through the glass as Draco and Lucius disappeared in one direction, and Harry, the Grangers, and the Weasleys vanished in another. In his way, he belonged to all of them, but for the moment, no one was missing him. 

He stood outside, in the street, until Narcissa came. At age twelve, he had already grown as tall as her, but he buried his face in her shoulder all the same, breathing in her scent and sighing out the tension he’d been holding in his spine since his fathers met. 

“Ronald, darling,” she laughed gently, handing him her packages. “Are you so tired already?”

He nodded mutely as she smoothed his hair.

“What’s become of your father?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Got separated.” Either she would read all about it in the Daily Prophet, or they’d already got away with it. Both possibilities meant there was no need for him to tell her what happened.

“My poor lost puppy,” she said, patting his shoulder. “Let’s get you an ice cream.” 

\---------------------------

Ronald finally fell asleep just to be jarred awake by screams. Harry was twisting, writhing in his bed linens, eyes wide open but still caught in a nightmare, his face white in the moonlight, slick with sweat. 

His voice was loud and uncanny, still Harry’s voice, but without words, and with an edge to it that was not quite human anymore. It made Ronald’s hair stand on end, and he shouted over it, unable to bear the sound. 

“Harry! Harry!”

Neville was awake too, running for help while Ronald kept calling out to Harry, desperate to bring him back out of the worst nightmare he’d ever known him to have. Harry sat up just to be sick on the floor. When he was finally awake enough to speak coherently, he was ranting about Arthur Weasley being bitten by a snake, and bleeding, in the throes of dying. 

Neville brought Professor McGonagall, who regarded Harry’s claims about Arthur Weasley with a seriousness that was truly terrifying. She was whisking Harry away, hardly pausing to clean up the sick.

“Come along, Potter. And you too, Mr…” She had been speaking to Ronald, inviting him to come with her wherever she was taking Harry. Maybe it was to see Arthur Weasley, to save him and make sure he was alright, or maybe just to tell him goodbye. But as she spoke his surname -- not Weasley, but Malfoy -- she remembered, and stopped. Whatever may have happened to Arthur Weasley was beyond the limits of his trust for his sixth born son. “Mr. Malfoy, would you fetch Fred and George Weasley for me?” was what she said instead. “I’m off to get Ginny.”

He nodded, vaulting up the stairs to the twins’ room.

In a flurry of long legs and ginger hair, the Weasleys were gone, and Ronald was left standing alone next to the portrait hole in the empty common room. He stood blinking in the cold moonlight until the blue light of a Lumos lit wand slowly filtered down from the girls’ staircase.

“Ronald?” It was Hermione, of course, wrapped in her dressing gown, her hair a sight, staring into the darkness after him.

“Yeah, right here,” he said.

She came to stand close to him, looking up, whispering. “I heard McGonagall tell Ginny your father is hurt -- Mr. Weasley, that is.”

He shrugged. “Harry saw it in a dream but McGonagall’s gone and taken it as a vision or something. Sure hope someone remembers to come back and let me know how it all turns out.”

Hermione glanced around the room. “Shall I sit up with you a little while?” she asked. “In case there’s news?”

Ronald felt it again -- the same feeling he’d had when Narcissa came and found him in the street, standing outside Flourish and Blotts’ bookshop, lost. He followed the feeling to the sofa, sitting himself beside Hermione and letting his face sink into her shoulder, against the fluffy rolled collar of her dressing gown.

“You’re so tired, Ronald,” she said. “Go on and sleep. I’ll wake you if anyone comes.”

He let out his breath. “I’d love some ice cream right now.”

“Can’t help you there,” she smirked. “But we’ll find you something nice at breakfast. It won’t be long now. Rest in the meantime.”

He nestled his head into her shoulder. She didn’t smell like Narcissa but she was softness and care, rescue all the same. His panic and grief was ebbing away. Sleep was coming back to him. Hermione lulled him to it as her hands took up their knitting again. He focused on the poke and loop, poke and loop of her stitches. This wasn’t like Narcissa either, but it was like Molly Weasley. There was a comfort to it as well, all of it enfolding Ronald as he drifted off to sleep.


	12. Twelve

In the Gryffindor common room, just before dawn, Ronald Malfoy slept on the sofa, his head on Hermione Granger’s shoulder. Her head was tipped against his in return, her hands slack around the knitting she’d worked at until she couldn’t stay awake, couldn’t wait any longer for news of what had become of Arthur Weasley.

“Where is he?” The portrait covering the entrance from the corridor banged against the wall outside as Graham Montague came crashing into the tower, shouting. “Harry Potter, where is he?”

Ronald and Hermione startled awake, Ronald swearing and rubbing his eyes, Hermione clutching her knitting to her chest, as if they’d been caught at something. 

“Bloody hell, Montague, you’re not supposed to be in here,” Ronald said, pulling his dressing gown closed and pointedly not rising to his feet. “How did you -- “

“I’m asking the questions here, Malfoy,” Montague snapped. “I got special clearance to enter from High Inquisitor Umbridge.”

As Montague made a second demand to see Harry, Ronald was making a show of ignoring him, craning his neck to see who he’d brought along. “There you are, Draco. Get him out of here,” Ronald said when he spotted his brother watching from over Montague’s shoulder. “Make this thick git understand that Harry’s been gone for hours.”

Draco stood with his jaw and fists clenched, glaring at the braided rug at Hermione’s feet, saying nothing. She was standing up, her head down, about to walk to the staircase to the girls’ dormitories.

“Where do you think you’re going, Mudblood?” Montague spat.

Ronald was swearing again. “Leave her be, and get the hell out of here.”

Someone uttered a bitter laugh behind Draco. “Get out? You don’t have to tell me twice.” This third person in the party of invading Slytherin prefects was now retreating through the portrait hole.

“Pansy?” Ronald hopped up from the sofa, calling back at the sound of her voice. His look of anger transmuted into fear, mouth falling open. glancing at Hermione, at the flat spot on the side of her head where she’d been leaning against him in her sleep. What did Pansy think she’d seen?

“Get back here, Parkinson, we're going to need someone to check the girls’ dormitory,” Montague barked after her.

She swore in reply as the portrait slammed shut behind her.

“Parkinson!”

“I’ll get her,” Ronald said, sidestepping Montague.

“Not so fast, Malfoy,” Montague said, his hand on Ronald’s sleeve. 

Ronald was squaring up but Draco took Montague by his other arm, whispering. Montague didn’t look happy about what Draco suggested, but he did say, “Fine, I’ll bring her back myself.” He left, the portrait flapping unclasped, leaving Draco alone with Ronald and Hermione.

“It’s the truth, Draco,” Ronald said. “Harry was violently ill and they whisked him off to Dumbledore in the middle of the night.”

Draco folded his arms, still saying nothing.

“Go on upstairs and check, if you don’t believe me,” Ronald said. “You can probably still smell the stench of sick in the bedroom.”

“Oh, I believe you,” Draco said. “Who can I trust if not my FAITHFUL brother? So LOYAL. It’s not like you’d ever give me the wrong idea about something on purpose. YOU wouldn’t do that. Not you, Ronald.”

Hermione stood squirming in the doorway to the spiral staircase. Draco wasn’t here for Umbridge -- not anymore. He wasn’t mad about missing Harry. He was mad at her for falling asleep head-to-head with his brother.

Well, how dare he?

Ronald was frowning himself. “What’re you on about, mate?”

“Nothing at all. Now tell me why the Weasleys were evacuated with Potter if he was simply sick. It makes no sense,” Draco said.

“I don’t know myself. Not really.”

“Ronald -- “ Hermione began.

“Weren’t you bent on leaving, Granger?” Draco interrupted.

“Yes, but -- “

“I need a word in private with my brother, since bringing the Weasleys into this makes it a family matter,” he said. “The two of us can talk here or, if you insist on staying, I can take him somewhere more private, like Professor Umbridge’s office.”

“Like I’d go there with you -- “

“It’s fine, Ronald,” she said in a tight, angry voice. “I’ll be upstairs.”

Ronald could still see her feet moving on the steps when Draco resumed questioning. “Why are the Weasleys involved in Harry getting sick? You’d better tell me before Montague gets back and takes over the questioning.”

“It’s nothing,” Ronald insisted. “Just a vivid nightmare Harry had where Arthur Weasley was in danger.”

Draco scoffed. “All this fuss -- Dumbledore and McGonagall running around, Umbridge ordering a search of the castle in the middle of the night -- all of this over a dream? How can that be?”

“Come on, Draco,” Ronald said. “Sometimes a dream isn’t just a dream. Don’t act like you’re not at the top of the class in Divination.”

“Potter had a vision?”

“I don’t know what it was. You can keep me here asking about it until dinnertime and I still won’t be able to tell you.”

Draco unfolded his arms. “Why didn’t they bring you along?”

Ronald let himself fall onto the sofa. “Why would they? I’m the Weasleys’ fairweather family member, not a crisis-worthy family member -- not like Harry is, apparently.”

Draco sat beside him. “I hope that doesn’t make you sorry. Unlike Potter, you have a family.”

“I know that,” Ronald sighed. “Frankly, I think that’s part of why I was excluded, what with Harry telling everyone Dad’s a Death Eater all the time.”

Draco coughed. “Reformed Death Eater.”

Ronald groaned into his hands. “Not according to Harry. He doesn’t say it in front of me, but I know he believes it all the same.”

They needed to change the subject, immediately. “To tell you the truth, Ronald, when I heard your holiday hosts had vanished, I was afraid you’d left with them and wouldn’t be back before the holidays. I was afraid I’d missed you.”

Ronald shifted. “You swore you didn’t want to come to the Burrow with me.”

“I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I want to be alone.” Draco stretched out his legs, crossed his ankles, looked at his shoes before saying, “Speaking of the company we keep, it seems you and Granger -- “

“Get up, Draco.” Montague was bawling through the portrait hole again. “Potter’s been spotted at St. Mungo’s. The search of the castle is called off.”

Both Draco and Ronald bolted to their feet. “The Weasleys too?” Draco asked.

Montague was already backing out of the portrait hole. “Yeah, their father was admitted to the hospital last night, some accident at the Ministry. He’s hurt but not to death. Come on, Umbridge has decided she wants us out before the rest of the Gryffindors wake up and go spare.”

Draco ducked to leave, and as he did, Ronald laid a hand on his elbow. “Hey, thanks,” he said. “And about the holidays, we’ll work something out. Wherever we end up, we’ll make sure to spend them together.”

\--------------------------------

Molly Weasley needed air. The narrow lane just off the dirty, busy London street outside St, Mungo’s hospital wasn’t a fresh or scenic place, but at least the noise and gloom and smell of the Dai Llewyllyn Ward for Serious Bites was behind her for a little while. The children had already come and gone from visiting Arthur and he was sleeping again -- an effect of all the venom and blood loss of the night before. 

Arthur’s care could easily consume all of her time and energy, but there were also the matters of the children and the holidays for her to attend to. Throwing a bash for a large family was an immense job, one everyone put their hopes into and no one appreciated properly. It didn’t make Molly unhappy, but it did make her weary.

She took a deep breath of the streetside air, thick with Muggle car exhaust, and set about rethinking all the plans she’d made. They wouldn’t be able to pass the holidays at the Burrow. Arthur would need healers’ care here in London for several more weeks. Sirius was very welcoming, offering to have them stay with him. But his house elf refused to serve blood traitors, even when they were Lucretia Black Prewett’s grand-niece and her children, so it would fall to Molly to cook and clean for everyone at Grimmauld Place. 

A few gifts still needed finishing and posting. Bill, Charlie, and Percy wouldn’t be coming which, while sad, was now a blessing in disguise. That left just the twins and Ginny. Oh, and Ronald. 

Ronald!

She had promised the Malfoys they would take him for Christmas. She had even offered to take nasty little Draco. Well, there was no way those promises could be kept. It wouldn’t do to bring Lucius Malfoy’s children into an Order of the Phoenix safe house. 

She’d owl Narcissa the bad news. But she didn’t trust herself to write a civil letter about it right now, not when Arthur had almost met his end trying to keep Death Eaters out of the Department of Mysteries. She was still too furious, too terrified.

Closing her eyes, Molly tipped her head, her wool hat cushioning her skull from the brickwork at her back. “Calm, calm,” she chanted to herself, just to be startled by a backfiring car.

Only it wasn’t a car. Instead, there was a flash of low winter sunlight on a polished silver handle, and above it, Lucius Malfoy’s ivory sculpted face pausing to appreciate its own reflection in the window pane of the false front of the hospital disguised as a derelict department store. He was just about to speak the password to step through the glass when, without wand or words, Molly stuck his feet to the pavement -- an old mothers’ trick to keep children from wandering off. 

Lucius glared at the pavement, pulling at his boots, frowning.

“That’s it, you stop right there, Lucius Malfoy,” Molly said, stepping out of the lane to where he could see her.

A look of shock crossed his face, then something almost like a smile. “Molly?”

“Don’t you dare smirk at me,” she warned. “You’re going to regret laying eyes on me today, of all days. You’ve come down here to gloat, haven’t you?“

When she was close enough to grasp the lapels of his cloak, she unstuck his feet and tugged him into the lane. Her hands and arms were strong, but if he’d fought her off in earnest he surely could have escaped. Instead, he allowed himself to be dragged along. 

“Gloat? No, I’m a leading patron of the hospital, here for a board meeting,” he said. “Whatever would I be gloating over?”

He let her force his back against the hospital’s brick wall, holding him there as she pointed a finger into his face. “Hiding behind your pocketbook, as usual,” she said. “Well, WE know what you’ve been up to -- you and your people.”

He sputtered for a moment, that almost-smile still flickering over his features. “What people?”

The smile made her angrier. She was rising higher onto her toes, into his face. “Your people, him, his snakes. All of them animals you can’t control, the same way they were out of your control when Fabian and Gideon died.“

His smile vanished completely at the mention of her brothers murdered in his cellar. “See here, Molly,” Lucius said. “What is it you’re accusing me of? What’s happened? Is it the children? I’m quite alarmed. You must tell me.”

She took in a huge breath, preparing to lay into him about his complicity in Arthur’s attack. She looked directly into his face, his pale blue eyes focused on hers, not with the heavy need of her children’s eyes, or of Arthur’s or Harry Potter’s. He was not looking into her for what she could give, but looking to see what he could give her. How long had it been since anyone had looked at her like that? When she opened her mouth, it wasn’t a scathing rebuke that came out, but a sob.

“Hush now,” Lucius said, pressing her cheek against the front of his cloak with the palm of his hand on her hair. “You’re exhausted. You’ve been here all night, haven’t you?”

She nodded against him, still sobbing.

“Are your children ill? Is that it?” he asked, settling both his arms around her.

The thick layers of his winter clothing were like quicksand she couldn’t help but sink into, only they were warm and soft and smelled like -- what was it, and why did she like it so well? She tried to shake it out of her head as she told him. “Not the children. Arthur -- nearly died.”

Lucius cooed, tutting. “Nearly? He’s expected to recover then?”

She nodded, her sobs quieting to sniffles.

“What happened to him?” he asked again, this time in a low, sonorous voice spoken against the top of her head.

She blinked away her tears. “You honestly don’t know?”

He smirked. “Of course not.”

Her arms were bent between them and she formed her hands into small fists, beating them weakly against his chest. “Oh, you don’t know, do you?” her tone was loud, sarcastic. “You don’t know what happened to Arthur, alone after work yesterday? Just like you knew nothing the last time a giant snake attacked one of my family members?”

Lucius was still holding her, but frowning. “Giant snake? At the Ministry? After hours? What was Arthur doing there alone? How was he rescued? How did he survive?”

Molly’s face blanched. If she answered any of these questions, she’d reveal far too much about the Order’s affairs. Her anger at the Death Eaters was swept away by her anger at herself for risking everything Arthur had suffered just to satisfy her urge to scold and punish Lucius Malfoy. It was not unlike the other incident between them, at the Prewett cemetery almost seventeen years earlier. That day, spurred on by the Milletus pollen, she had lost control and slipped, created chaos for innocent people and all over him. This time the intensity was the same, only it was a fit of anger not…

She pushed herself out of the quicksand. “Get out of my sight,” she said. “And don’t send us Ronald for the holidays. We’ll be stuck here in London while Arthur recovers, guests at the home of a friend, not in a position to take anyone else in -- not even our own son.”

Covering her face with her hands, she rushed out of the lane, leaving Lucius to watch as she disappeared through the glass, back inside the hospital to where her wounded husband waited.

“Our own son,” Lucius repeated. The words themselves meant nothing dramatic. Molly could have been speaking of a son of hers and Arthurs, or of hers and his -- or of all of theirs. Maybe he only imagined it, but there was something besides the words, something in the way she said it...

Lucius eyed the tear stains on his cloak. Arthur Weasley attacked by a snake -- the Dark Lord had made a move against the Ministry without taking the Death Eaters’ counsel first, such was his impatience. His snake was subtle but also a rash creature, not at all tame. The Dark Lord himself had returned with a new animalistic wildness about him, a distance gaping between himself and his former humanity. 

Lucius was less sure this time how best to serve and satisfy him -- how to appease him so he wouldn’t threaten Narcissa and the boys. One thing was for certain. The children could not come home to the manor. If Lucius had any doubt of that Arthur Weasley, still bleeding into his bandages, still drinking anti-venom potions for dear life, had been kind enough to put those doubts to rest.

\---------------------------------

Professor McGonagall had let Hermione come along with Ronald to the meeting where she explained the snake attack and its consequences. Harry’s dream had been a vision indeed. Arthur, who was lucky to have survived the attack, would be recovering for weeks, and there would be no one at the Burrow to take Ronald in over the holidays.

He was all sighs as they left McGonagall’s office.

“Relieved, are you?” Hermione said. “I know I am. Amazing that Harry not only saved Mr. Weasley but then got away from here in the nick of time, right before Umbridge got hold of them.”

Ronald sighed again. “Yeah, brilliant. I just wish -- I wish I was more relieved. Arthur and I -- there’s this weird gap between us. I should be happier that he’s safe but…”

“Oh, who’s to say how you should feel right now?” she said, batting his arm. “Not a lot of people live to see their bio-dads attacked by snakes. You’re the only expert on it that I’ve ever met.”

“Biological fathers,” Ronald muttered. “That reminds me: I need to find Draco and tell him we’re both spending the holidays here at school.”

Hermione stopped walking, pulling on Ronald’s arm until he stopped as well.

“About your holidays,” she said. “I couldn’t help overhearing the pair of you talking about it this morning -- “

“Oh, couldn’t you?” he said.

She smirked. “Well, the point is, I’d like to invite you both to spend Christmas with my family in London. You’re my best friend, Ronald, and I’ve spent holidays in the Burrow with you and Harry before, so it’s only fair I take my turn hosting you.”

Ronald raised his eyebrows. “And Draco?”

She nodded at her feet. “I heard what he said to you this morning. I understand the pair of you are a package deal, I accept that.”

“You might be able to accept it, but he never will. Draco Malfoy holidaying in Muggle London for two weeks -- unimaginable. Thanks, but it’s no use,” Ron said, shifting miserably on his feet.

She was sighing now. “Let me have the first crack at inviting him. If he tells me ‘no’ once, he might feel like he has to say ‘yes’ to you when he’s asked a second time.”

Ronald bent to kiss Hermione roughly and noisily on the top of her head. “You’re the most wonderful person I’ve ever met. Now where, at long last, is my ice cream?”

\-----------------------------

It was late in the evening, nearly time to close up, when Hermione found Draco exactly where she expected him, in the restricted section of the library, scowling over potions books.

He glanced up from his notes as she stepped over the rope. “Granger. Still up after your long night yesterday?”

She took a chair and set it close to him before sitting down at the table. “You can’t be mad at me for falling asleep on the sofa comforting your brother after his bio-dad was bitten by an enormous snake, Malfoy.”

“I can’t? Is that a fact?”

“It is,” she said. “What I offered Ronald last night was an act of friendship, or motherly affection at best.”

Draco scoffed, snapping his book shut. “That’s just how he likes it.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don't start with that creepy Muggle doctor and his mother theories again.”

“Fine.”

“Look, I don’t know what you think you saw this morning,” she said, “but Ronald is nothing like my boyfriend.”

Draco wrenched his bag off the back of his chair, nearly breaking his quill as he jammed it inside. “Not yet, he’s not.”

“Well, you aren’t wrong about that,” she said. Draco had finished hastily repacking his bag and was about to stand when she stopped him with a hand laid gently on his knee. Every one of his muscles froze. “But two kisses doesn’t make you my boyfriend either, Malfoy.”

He threw his bag on the floor, gripped the wrist of the hand laid on his knee, and pulled her out of her chair, into his lap. His arm was around her waist, his forehead against her temple, his lips brushing her ear as he spoke. “No? Then how many would it take?”

He was holding her loosely enough for her to break away, but she didn’t move. His breath was moving fast against her ear, raising a shiver down her neck and all along her arm. She had imagined kissing Draco Malfoy again -- that and more, truth be told. But she had never imagined him confessing he wanted her. And if she had, she wouldn’t have imagined it being anything as abrupt and visceral as this. 

That was what was happening, wasn’t it? 

She couldn’t be sure, but she could be careful. She turned her head to speak to him, her forehead pressed to his. “We won’t work, Malfoy,” Hermione said, her voice quiet and pained, breathless. “It’s impossible when we’re on different sides of a national conflict.”

He swallowed. “Ronald and I have never agreed on politics either. But there’s enough affection between us for it not to matter much.”

She clenched her eyes shut. “This isn’t just politics. The conflict is based on whether I’m fundamentally inferior to you, whether I have any right to be a part of your society.”

He brushed his nose against her cheek. “No, it’s not that. It’s really just about money and property, and while my father would give the world for that, I don’t even care. I do what he asks of me as the son and heir of his house and the rest is rubbish. The blood status nonsense is just an ideological smokescreen for keeping hold of all the old money and land.”

“Well, it’s far more than smoke to me,” she said, drawing her face back. “You heard how Montague spoke to me this morning. It was viscous and personal. And you’ve used that word against me yourself.“

“I’m sorry,” he said, bowing his head against her shoulder. “If I’ve neglected to say it before, I’m saying it now. I’m sorry for what I said, Hermione Granger. It wasn’t until you got petrified in second year that I understood how dangerous that talk could be. But by then, I’d already said it. I’m sorry. I was a stupid kid.”

She closed her arms around his neck. “Did you come to gawk at me while I was a petrified thirteen-year-old?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No. Pomfrey and the rest had the good sense to forbid it. I did comfort Ronald after he came back from visiting you in the hospital wing. Awful…”

She patted his back. “There, there, I’m safe now.”

He pulled her hip sideways, hard against his stomach. “Don’t you use that maternal tone with me, Granger.”

She lifted her chin. “I will for as long as you keep acting like a naughty child who sabotages me at every turn.“

“How do you figure that?” he said. “I don’t sabotage you. I enable you.”

She shouted a laugh.

“Think about it, Granger,” he insisted. “Who talked you through fixing the Protean charmed galleons even though I could tell they were meant for passing messages around Potter’s secret society?”

She jumped in his lap, sputtering. “That is not what the galleon was for.”

He forced a laugh. “Oh, give over, Granger. And who stays close enough to Umbridge to keep her off your trail?”

She took her arms from his neck and folded them across her chest. “Umbridge does as she pleases. It’s got nothing to do with you.”

“No? Well what about Montague? I paired up with him last night when I heard he was taking responsibility for ransacking Gryffindor Tower, and I kept him from stepping more than a metre into your common room, didn’t I?”

She huffed.

He was still talking. “And what about the first time Montague came for you, in that vanished room on the fifth floor, when I turned my whole life completely upside down by kissing you into hiding?”

“Well, I’m sorry that was so horrible for you -- “

He cut her off, taking her face in both of his hands and kissing her mouth. She clamped her hands on each of his shoulders and leaned into him until his chairback creaked threateningly behind him. He ignored the sound, raking his hands into her hair, curls coiling around his fingers. For the first time, it was her pushing his lips open with her tongue, his voice sounding in surprise and satisfaction. By the stars, she was perfectly made for him to kiss, and he had to keep kissing her or he might do something stupid like moan those words into her mouth.

She broke away, leaving his mouth open and wet, unfinished. “Here is how you will prove your Muggle-tolerant heart to me,” she whispered into his face, tracing his cheekbones with the pads of her thumbs. “You and Ronald will spend the holidays in Muggle London at my Muggle parents’ house with me. You will drive in cars, and cook, wash up, watch television, and take out the wheelie bin. There will be no magic and plenty of chaperones for two weeks.”

He had regained his composure enough to tip her back, as if he was dipping her during a dance. “Easily done,” he said, his eyes staring into hers as she clung to his shoulders to keep from falling out of his lap. “And since Ronald is coming, the visit will give you a proper chance to choose which one of us you truly want.”


	13. Thirteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick fluffy update because I'm not feeling good. Enjoy. DDD

Kings Cross was a madhouse of holiday travelers when Hermione Granger stepped through the barrier at platform 9 ¾ with the Malfoy brothers following behind her on their way to spend Christmas holidays with her family in London.

“Do you see my parents anywhere, Ronald?” she asked, standing on her toes.

“Not yet,” he said.

Draco rolled his eyes. Of course Ronald had met Hermione’s parents before.

“Need me to boost you up to see?” Ronald offered, already unhanding his trunk to lift Hermione.

“No, she doesn’t need you manhandling her,” Draco spat. “How do you think she’d find them if she didn’t have us along? Go look around like you normally would, Granger. We’ll wait with the bags. And you can leave us the cat too.”

Hermione’s colour was rising. Thanks to their meeting in the library when she invited Draco to show his Muggle tolerance by coming for Christmas, she was up to three, possibly four kisses with him -- it got a little murky at the end. But it still wasn’t enough for her to consider him her boyfriend, apparently. 

She led the boys to a cafe, sat poor Crookshanks, howling in his carrier, on the floor beside them, and used her Muggle pocket money to buy a cinnamon bun to set on a table between them.

“There,” she said, “sit here and see if you can share that nicely while I’m gone. You need the practice.” With that, she disappeared into the crowd.

Ronald tore off the first piece. Draco sat fuming a little longer, not beginning to eat until the crowd thinned between trains and they could see Hermione again.

“There they are. She’s found them,” Ronald announced through his mouthful of sticky bread. “Reunited with Dr. and Dr. Granger.”

Draco squinted to where Hermione stood with a woman in a red peacoat and a man with tufty brown hair that he could definitely have grown out into a bushy mane if he had a mind to. The warm greetings between parents and daughter were over and now Hermione and her mother were having a tremendously animated conversation embellished by a lot of hand waving in the boys’ direction.

Ronald broke into laughter. “Oh, no. She didn’t.”

Draco was alarmed. “What? What hasn’t she done?”

Ronald swallowed. “She didn’t warn them we were coming. She’s only telling them now that we’re right here and it’s too late to refuse us.”

“What?” Draco nearly shouted. "No, it’s a terrible imposition. She can’t do that.”

Ronald was still laughing. “Easier to ask forgiveness than permission, mate. Yeah, if I know Hermione, and I do, she’s over there acting like our plans collapsed just now, all unexpected, and we’re stranded here, heartbroken with nowhere to spend Christmas unless the Grangers take us in.”

Draco covered his face. “So pathetic,” he groaned.

“But effective,” Ronald said. “Look, she’s getting through to them.”

Hermione was holding each of her parents by the hand as they hung their heads and nodded, resigning themselves to suddenly having two uninvited house guests for the holidays at the last minute.

“That sneaky little minx,” Draco said, still embarrassed but half in admiration of her all the same.

“See,” Ronald crowed, stuffing the last of the cinnamon bun into his mouth. “She might not be as different from you as you thought.”

When the Grangers began to step in their direction, the boys leapt to their feet and rushed to meet them. Hermione’s mother nodded, offering Ronald a pleasant “Happy Christmas” while her husband dropped an arm around his shoulders and slapped his palm against his bicep. “Ronald, old boy. Aren’t you tall now.”

“Dad, Mum, this is Draco, Ronald’s brother,” Hermione said. All the usual handshaking and how-do-you-doing happened as they left the station for the car park.

“So you must be one of them too, are you Draco?” Ann Granger asked, nodding knowingly.

Hermione braced for Draco to fly off offended at the suggestion he might be anything other than a wizard, but he managed to smile and say, “Yes. Our whole family. In fact, yours will be the first non-magical home I’ve ever visited, and I’m afraid I may need some coaching. Please pardon me in advance.”

Ronald and Hermione both gaped at his uncommonly gracious reply.

“What?” he said.

Even though Draco had told the Grangers he was out of his element, they didn’t understand the extent of it and neither did he. Ronald and Hermione rushed ahead of him as they approached the car, Hermione opening the door and sliding inside, Ronald pushing Draco after her to keep him safely seated in the middle, between them. Thanks to Arthur Weasley, Ronald knew all about cars -- or thought he did.

Draco folded himself into the Granger’s Toyota, eyes wide, pushing at the low ceiling with his hands, glancing around the alarmingly small space and the very complicated looking buttons and levers surrounding the steering wheel. As Ronald slammed the door closed behind himself, the three of them were squashed together, Draco grunting as he was compacted from both sides. Hermione had the presence of mind to grab the buckle of Draco’s seatbelt before he sat down on it and she passed it across his lap for Ronald to fasten for him.

“Get off,” Draco hissed at him. “What are you grabbing at my arse for?”

“It’s Muggle law,” Ronald hissed back.

"What kind of sick -- ”

“Hush, Malfoy,” Hermione interjected, “you have to belt yourself to the car for safety. The clip for it is on the seat behind you.”

He snatched the buckle out of Ronald’s hand and fought for a minute to find the other end for himself before giving up and dropping it between his knees.”It’s no use. I’ll just hang on.” He was linking his arms through Hermione’s.

“Oh for star’s sake,” she said, picking up the seat belt and leaning over him. He was perplexed but no longer angry when she all but hugged him as she clicked the belt into place. His hand rose between them, unseeable to anyone else, and caressed a lock of her hair as she settled back into place. Had she even noticed?

“There. Now behave yourself.” Yes, she had.

Ronald was muttering. “Oh, so it’s just me who’s not allowed to grab your arse. Is that it?”

“Maybe it is,” Draco murmured back.

“Alright back there your three? It’s a bit small for a full load,” Ann Granger called as she climbed into the driver’s seat. Tim Granger was ignoring them, babbling nonsense words of comfort to Crookshanks through the window in his carrier as he held it in his lap.

“Oh, it’s fine. We’re all siblings here, or just as good as,” Hermione chirped.

Draco didn’t know about rearview mirrors and did not hide his look of disgust when she implied something sisterly between them. Ann did not fail to notice. She smirked into the mirror. “First time in a car, Draco? Well, nothing to be nervous about. Off we go.”

Driving itself was quite pleasant for him. Ann drove as quickly and aggressively as London traffic would allow, but he liked speed and quick changes in direction, especially when they sent him shifting into Hermione. When they got to the Granger’s house he fumbled his seat belt again, eyeing her hopefully until Ronald clicked it open for him crowing, “There you go, little one.”

The boys extricated themselves from the backseat and stood stretching in the driveway, tall and overdressed in the drab little street. Tim rushed inside to liberate Crookshanks. He had already cleared out of the cramped front hall by the time Ann was waving the boys upstairs with their trunks. 

Hermione led them up, walking backwards, explaining. “I’ve made a deal with my parents. Since it’s such short notice and the spare room is all cleaned up for my Auntie Inez’s arrival tomorrow, you’ll both sleep in my room tonight.”

The boys coughed out sputtering, strangled sounds, almost in unison before she added. “And I’ll sleep downstairs on the sofa.” 

“Oh,” they said, again in unison.

As she finished, she turned her back to them and opened the door to the bedroom she hadn’t properly lived in since she was eleven years old. It was decorated for a bright little girl, shelves lined with paperback junior novels, everything painted white and pastel mauve, floral wallpaper, ruffled pillows, and teddy bears.

Ronald laughed. “It’s like the Weasleys’ Aunt Muriel’s parlor.”

“Shut it, Ronald,” she said, batting his arm with the back of her hand. “My parents run a very busy dental surgery and haven’t had much time for renovations.”

While Hermione sparred with Ronald about the decor, Draco fell onto the bed, burying his face in the pillows, clutching a scruffy brown teddy bear to his chest before rolling onto his side to say, “It’s nice.”

Ronald tugged him back to sitting. “Get up. You’re not sleeping there.”

“Then you’re not either,” he said, standing up and shoving at Ronald.

“For the love of Boggarts, it’s a double bed. There’d be room for both of you, if you’d be civil.“ 

Hermione had never seen them get past the shoving and batting phase of fighting with each other and wasn’t prepared for what was coming next. They were suddenly three years old again, grappling with each other, arms and legs and necks twisting as they tried to immobilize one another in crude wrestling holds before driving each other into the ground. In her small room, this meant falling with all of their combined force onto her bed.

Only they weren’t actually three year olds. The ancient, magically reinforced solid oak bedsteads of Malfoy Manor might have been up for the impact of two boys the size of fully grown men, but not the dried out pine frame her parents had twisted together with Allen wrenches. There was a great crash as the slats beneath Hermione’s bed broke and the mattress fell through to the floor.

“Hermione!” Ann called from downstairs.

The boys were on their feet, the teddy bear tumbling to the floor between them. They stared gobsmacked at the busted bed still covered in a tousled mauve coverlet.

“Quick, fix it.”

“How? We can’t use magic in front of Muggles or we’ll end up in a hearing like Potter had last summer.”

“They can only trace it if you use a wand.”

“So you go ahead and fix it wandlessly then.”

“Hermione, help -- “

“What’s all this then?” said Tim Granger, crowding into the room. “Our bed didn’t quite measure up to the Malfoy family, yeah?”

“So sorry, Dr. Tim,” Ronald was saying. “We’ve each had a growth spurt since the last time we bunked together. Guess we don’t know our own size anymore.”

He chuckled at them. “Don’t suppose you’d know what to do with a hammer and nails if I brought them to you either.” He sighed. “I’ll fetch my toolkit.”

Ann passed him on the stairs mumbling to himself. “Ruddy wizards.”

She caught him by the arm. “Her bed’s broken?”

Tim shuddered. “Yes.”

“Which one did it: Fire or Ice?”

Time shuddered even more violently. “Which one is which? Ronald for fire? With the hair?”

Ann frowned. “No, Draco for fire, obviously.”

Tim groaned. “They teamed up on the poor bed. It never stood a chance. I’m having them fix it though. They’ve got to learn to be careful.”

\-----------------------------------------

In comparison to the debacle with trying to get the Malfoy brothers settled into their sleeping quarters, tea went smoothly. Ronald had on his garden party charm and once the boys stopped posturing for dominance in their new environment, Hermione was able to settle in and enjoy being at home. 

“You’re a chess player?” Ronald was beaming at Tim Granger. “Hermione, how could you never have mentioned it? Why have we never played chess, Dr. Tim?”

“Because you’d pulverize him,” Ann said. “Tim is formidable among the sleepy old chaps at our club, but he’s hardly of the calibre to be touring Russia learning from masters.”

“Pulverize,” Ronald repeated. “Hermione, I thought you said in non-magical chess the violence only happened in the imagination.”

She rolled her eyes. “Mum is speaking metaphorically, Ronald. Yes, it’s all imaginary. Our chess set is made of plastic. It’s very civilized but you’d find it boring.”

Draco scoffed. “Come on now, give Ronald some credit. He’s got a stellar imagination.” Something about it sounded like an insult but no one was sure exactly what.

Their dinner conversation stayed otherwise light and friendly, even Crookshanks showing he’d forgiven them for the long train and car rides by bumping against the shins of everyone but Ronald beneath the table.

When they’d finished, Tim brought Ronald back upstairs to finish repairing the bed. Draco was about to follow when Hermione jumped to her feet. “Don't mind the washing up, Mum. I promised Draco I’d teach him how to do it. He’s never had the chance.”

Ann raised both eyebrows. “Missed out on that, have you Draco? Well, do be careful. Everything in here can break.”

The television came on in the next room, a news program. The presenter’s perfect diction was the only sound as Hermione and Draco glanced cautiously at one another across the table. It was the first time they’d been alone since they’d last met in the library, when he’d pulled her into his lap and she’d…

He stood up, following her lead in gathering up dirty silverware. They needed to talk about something safe, which meant Ronald. “So how did Ronald come to be such a pet of your father’s?”

“Everyone likes Ronald,” she said.

Draco grimaced. “Maybe. But why specifically does your dad like him?”

She sighed. “Because everyone likes Dad too. He sees himself in Ronald, as a young man with a charming, cheery disposition and a promising future -- “

“And a crush on a fussy, bossy girl,” Draco finished.

She shushed him. “Quiet, she’ll hear you. If she does, she won’t let you off easily, and you won’t be able to snog your way out of it.”

He smirked. “No, you’re right. I wouldn’t. But I can be charming too.”

She scoffed. “Maybe you can be. But you’re not. You’re moody and scary.”

“So your parents are rooting for Ronald,” Draco said.

She stopped in the middle of the kitchen floor, a dirty drinking glass in each hand. “Rooting?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Rooting for him. Supporting him. On team Ronald. We’re here so you can make up your mind which one of us you want -- “

“That is not why -- “

“And your parents are cheering for Ronald.” He stepped closer, taking the glasses from her. “They wish you liked him as much as they do.” There was no self-pity in his statement. It was more like gloating, like he knew that it didn’t matter what her parents wanted when it came to how Hermione felt about the Malfoys.

Her posture stiffened. “I adore Ronald. He and Harry are my best friends.”

Draco nodded, smirking. “It’s so true. And everyone knows friends to sweethearts with hardly any chemistry is every parent’s favourite romantic trope.”

“Shut it, Malfoy,” she said. 

He rumbled a laugh at her as he turned his back and closed in on the sink.

She joined him, clearing her throat. “The first thing to do is to fill the sink. It’s just like wizards’ plumbing. Cold water on this side, hot water there. Use the hottest you can stand. If you want to protect your delicate, manor-raised hands, Mum keeps a pair of rubber gloves underneath.”

“What makes you think my hands are delicate?” he asked, taking her hands in each of his, pressing their palms flat against each other. “I’ve been playing school quidditch for years now, hours of regular practice throttling a broom for dear life.”

She was speechless, hopelessly distracted by the heat and texture of his hands as they enfolded hers, rotating slightly, dragging their palms together as his fingers slipped between hers. Despite their familiarity with each other’s mouths and faces, they had never touched each other like this before. When he took her hand, it was usually by the wrist and for just long enough to bring her close enough to kiss. There was a roughness to his skin, a coarseness to his fingerprints that awakened something in her flesh.

Not now.

“So no gloves,” she said, disentangling their hands.

“No thank you.”

“Right,” she turned the faucets on, reaching for a bottle of green dishwashing liquid. “And you’ll need to add this.”

He frowned at it. “Muggles have nicked potions to do their washing up?”

“No,” she said, dumping far too much into the stream of running water. “It’s not magical, like the soap and shampoo at school. It’s chemical. They make it scientifically, most of them don’t even know how. They just buy it at the shop. No questions asked.”

He took the bottle from her and sniffed at it, pleasantly surprised. “Right. So dishes go into the potioned water, and then onto the rack to dry.”

“No, it’s not magic, Malfoy,” she said. “Brace yourself and stick your quidditch hands in the water. Take the sponge and rub the food away.”

He faked a retch. “Seriously?”

“Ah, so you are delicate after all. That’s what I thought. I’ll get the gloves.“

“Stand back, Granger,” he said, plunging his hands into the hot soapy water. 

She stood next to him, watching as he scrubbed marinara sauce from her mother’s dinnerware. “Good enough, good enough,” she said, taking the plate from him to rinse and stack.

“Yeah, I am good at it, aren’t I,” he said.

It wasn’t a question. She laughed, standing close enough to him at the sink for their arms to brush. “Yes, you have a beautiful gift for washing up. Your mother will be proud.”

She cringed as soon as she said it. Why did she have to mention his parents? His mother might think Draco’s hands-on domestic side was worthwhile, but what would that sneering, elitist father of his have to say?

Nothing like that seemed to be going through Draco’s mind. He was reflecting instead on the beauty of washing up. He raised his hand out of the water, his thumb and forefinger forming a ring, a film of rainbow-streaked soapy water suspended between them. “If there’s no magic,” he began, “how are these Muggle bubbles made?”

She leaned close to his hand, blowing gently on the film between his fingers, until a bubble formed and floated away, falling slowly toward the sink.

He laughed, open and childlike. “Impressive, Granger.”

She was laughing with him. “Not at all. Try it yourself.”

He captured another film of soapy water between his fingers and blew at it as if it was a birthday candle.

“Gently, Malfoy,” she chided when the film splattered without a bubble. “Blow it gently. I know it’s counter to your nature, but figure out how to use your mouth gently.”

His smile faltered. “I can be gentle. Sorry.”

She felt her cheeks colouring. “You have nothing to apologize for. It’s just that I have no experience with that side of you.”

He swallowed, his expression serious as he said, “Next time then. Gentle -- I promise. See?” 

He raised his hand to his face again, and blew a delicate, steady stream of air. The soapy membrane bowed and quivered until its edges snapped together in a shimmering globe. He cheered it on as it drifted away. Hermione watched him, watching it. She raised her upturned hand and caught the bubble in her palm. It shivered, its rainbow lights swirling before it popped and vanished.

\-----------------------------

It turned out the slats on Hermione’s bed were splintered to the point where Tim Granger needed to go to a hardware store to buy a metal mending plate in order to fix them. But by the time he and Ronald had resigned themselves to that, the shops were closed. There was enough room on the floor in Hermione’s room for one person to sleep on a camp mattress, and it was decided that person would be Hermione herself. The brothers would sleep where there was more room, on the floor in the lounge.

Tired from a long day of traveling, they passed the time before bed with the television on. The programme was a line of Muggle celebrities seated on sofas, chattering and laughing. Tim sat in his armchair snoozing over a newspaper. Draco lay on his stomach on the rug, reading an old chemistry textbook, one from back in the days when the Grangers were off falling in love in dental school. He was partway through a chapter titled “emulsification.” 

Ronald and the women sat on the sofa. Hermione was seated in the middle, her head resting against her mother’s shoulder. Ronald stole a glance at them. If Hermione was snuggling with her mother, it meant she didn’t need any affection from him. He found it odd that this fact was something of a relief to him, but there it was.

At bedtime, the coffee table was shifted out of the way, and Ronald and Draco were now lying together in the small space made for them on the floor. They lay wrapped in shiny sleeping bags like gifts beneath the Granger family Christmas tree. 

Draco was already asleep, strangely, unsettlingly content. Ronald, on the other hand, was wide awake in the gold and red electric lights left burning on the tree.

In his mind, he was on the road from Hogwarts to the train station in Hogsmeade. He’d already sent his trunk on the carriages and was walking into town alone, missing Harry and feeling sorry for himself for having two families and being shut out of both of their Christmases. Molly Weasley had sent an owl explaining Arthur’s accident as if it had nothing to do with the Order and apologizing for the sudden change in plans. There was a package from her in his trunk, waiting for Christmas morning.

There was no point pining for any of his parents, especially not when there were two perfectly fine parents waiting at Hermione’s place in London to take care of him. It was true that he got on well with the Grangers. Ann was brisk and bossy but with Hermione still holding the title of his dream girl, brisk and bossy just made Ronald like Ann more. Tim Granger was brilliant, as far as Ronald was concerned. Were the Grangers Ronald’s third family? And how many more families would he need before he was whole?

“Malfoy!” someone was calling from behind him as he walked. “Ronald, wait up.”

He turned to see Pansy Parkinson sliding over the edge of a slow-moving carriage, joining him on the road, her little black leather boots crunching over the frozen mud toward him. His heartbeat wobbled at the sight of her, something in his unconscious mind recognizing her as the girl he knew who was most likely to touch him. But then he remembered he hadn’t spoken to her since she stormed out of Gryffindor Tower after finding him asleep on the sofa with Hermione. He was probably in for a row.

“Morning, Parkinson,” he said, rather flatly.

She came close to him, not smiling but not looking angry either. “There’s another carriage following right behind us. It should be coming over the rise in just a minute,” she said. “So I’m going to be quick about this.”

Ronald frowned. “Look, I hope you know it was nothing. You hadn’t even spoken to me for days when -- “

“Draco says you’re staying with Grangers for the holidays,” she interrupted.

He sighed. “I didn’t have a lot of choices. It was either that or -- “

“Shut up, Ronald,” she said. She had clamped her fingers on the front of his cloak and tugged downward on it as she stood high on her toes. His breath caught as she kissed his cheek with a warm, dewy mouth.

She sunk back onto her heels. “How was that? Lacklustre?”

He gulped a breath. “No. Not lacking any lustre at all.”

She was still holding his cloak, smoothing the fabric between her fingers. “Well, I always fulfil my obligations. And this is where our lessons end, unless...” she was rising toward him again, leaving another even slower and sweeter kiss on his opposite cheek, the breath he’d been holding shuddering out of him, “unless you come back to school having chosen me instead of her.”

He blinked down into her face, still close, looking up at him through dark, curling lashes. In that moment, he’d been so drawn to her, so mad with loneliness and relief at being wanted by someone that he might have snatched her and shouted out that he did choose her, Pansy Parkinson, who cares -- yes, of course. 

But at the crest of the hill, a carriage was advancing, just as she promised. Pansy let go of his cloak, stepping into position to hop back into the carriage.

“Choose me,” she said one more time before riding away.

Now, on the Granger’s floor, at the end of a long day, Pansy’s kisses seemed like they happened ages ago. The choice was no longer obvious. But he did reach up in the light of the Granger’s Christmas tree and brush his fingers against the spot on his face where both Pansy and Hermione had kissed him in the last month. 

He sighed and rolled over. There was Draco, sleeping at his side. Draco his brother, Pansy Parkinson’s former childhood sweetheart, and what was he to Hermione? He couldn’t be a dispassionate house guest, not with the history the two of them had. But he was here all the same, polite as you please, and now sleeping away like a satisfied cat. What was he doing here? It would have been nice to think he came out of the brotherly love between them. Nice, but a bit off. He was up to something. Was it another nasty assignment from their father? Sent along to monitor developments with Arthur’s accident by staying close to people associated with the Order?

Draco’s hands were folded in front of his face, smelling clean, like dish soap. Ronald blew into Draco’s sleeping face, disturbing his fringe, making him frown without waking him, roused just enough to turn onto his other side. With Draco’s back turned, Ronald curled himself into a ball and pressed the top of his head into the dip between Draco’s shoulder blades. And like that, he finally settled into sleep.


	14. Fourteen

Hermione rushed down the stairs first thing in the morning, desperate to get her house guests breakfast before her mother was bothered by them. It was no light thing to turn up for the holidays with two unannounced teenaged boys in tow. She had known that from the start and had promised her mother they’d be no trouble. But it was a hard promise to keep, especially now that the Malfoy brothers were a musky mass of arms and legs and day-old hair cream in her mother’s front room.

Sliding in on her sock feet, Hermione found her mother already up and dressed, leaning over the back of the sofa, watching the boys sleeping on the floor.

"Mum, stop that," Hermione said in the sternest whisper she could.

"What?"

"Don't ogle them in their sleep. It's dead creepy."

Ann scoffed. "There's no ogling about it. These pretty babies -- I’m observing them for research purposes. Come have a look.” 

Hermione meant to keep protesting but the words died in her throat when she got close enough to see the sleeping boys. They were sprawled awkwardly around each other, their breaths noisy and rough, their hair spectacularly mussed, and still they were simply too beautiful. If they could be merged into a single person, the pair of them might make the perfect boy. 

“Take a breath, darling,” Ann laughed gently, reading it all in Hermione’s face. “Cozy, aren’t they?”

They were sleeping awfully close together, Draco lying on his side with his cheek pressed to Ronald’s ribcage, Ronald’s arm outstretched, running over the top of Draco’s head. They weren’t exactly intertwined or cuddling, but there was no space at all between them. Draco stirred, turning onto his other side.

Asleep, without their waking personalities animating their faces, they looked more harmless, and much more alike than usual.

Ann saw this as well. "Alright here’s the research. Draco's parents adopted Ronald, you say?"

Hermione nodded. "Yes. His biological parents are the Weasleys. You know that's why Harry and I are invited to the Burrow so often. Ronald is one of them, in his way."

Ann hummed. "Both Molly and Arthur Weasley are his parents? And the man we saw brawling with Arthur in that bookshop all those years ago is Ronald’s adopted father?”

Hermione nodded again. “Yes, that’s Lucius Malfoy, Draco’s dad. Now he’s Ronald’s dad too.”

Ann folded her arms. “You don’t say. Well, if that's their story, I suppose we’ll have to stick to it. Remarkable though, the resemblance, isn’t it? Don’t let their hair colours fool you. Oh, but if they insist it’s a coincidence it is possible those Malfoys trained Ronald to set his facial expressions like theirs until he got stuck that way."

She turned and left the lounge, Hermione following. “Mum, that’s not something people can do.”

“Isn’t it? How about those old married couples who start to look alike?” she said, grinning and raising an awful racket as she pulled a frying pan from the cabinet.

“They are rather like an old married couple,” Hermione said. “You’re cooking for them? You never cook before 6:00 pm.”

Ann smirked. “No. Your father says he will. I’m just making enough noise to wake them up for it.”

Sure enough, the boys were stirring in their sleeping bags. Draco had fallen asleep first so he woke first, throwing Ronald’s arm back at him.

Ronald startled and woke up calling, “Harry!”

“No such luck. It’s only me,” Draco said. “Merry Christmas Eve, by the way.”

Ronald was blinking, remembering where he was. “Christmas Eve,” he said, sitting up. “I wonder what Mum and Dad are doing today. Or rather, what country they’re in today.”

“Greece, I think it is,” Draco said, fighting to fix his hair without his wand. Yesterday’s hair cream had turned on him during the night.

Hermione had come from the kitchen, asking the brothers how they liked their eggs. Over the years, she’d seen Ronald in all sorts of states of disarray, but disheveled Draco was an entirely new creature. She couldn’t help but laugh.

“What?” he said, though he knew right away, both his hands frantically smoothing and tidying himself. “Is it that bad?”

Ronald snorted. “Always.”

Draco punched his arm. “You did it, Ronald. Sleeping with your arm draped over my head.”

Ronald lunged toward him, trying to subdue him with a violent hug. “It’s not my fault I can’t help myself. You’re so cuddly when you’re sleepy.”

Draco was shoving Ronald off him, knocking him into the displaced coffee table, its legs grating alarmingly across the floor.

“Stop-stop-stop,” Hermione whisper-yelled, hopping between them to push them apart by their shoulders. “Honestly, this house wasn’t built for an overgrown pair of ill-mannered siblings.”

“Ill-mannered?" they protested in unison.

"Yes. You’ve got to behave yourselves and mind your environment. What would your mother say?”

Ronald accepted the reprimand almost eagerly, but Draco huffed at her. “What have I told you about taking that maternal tone with me, Granger?”

Ronald blinked. “What have you told her? And when?”

Draco reached around Hermione’s legs to give Ronald one final nudge. Hermione stood frozen between them. She’d stepped into their space and the smell of Draco’s hair and whatever pheromone they’d both been exuding all night in their sleep was filling her head and making her stupid. How bad would it be if her mother came into the room to find her snuggled into their sleeping nest with them?

Awfully bad.

She settled for swiping her hand once over a cowlick on the crown of Draco’s head. “If you like, one of you can shower upstairs while we’re getting breakfast on.”

“Me, I will,” Draco said.

“Can you get the shower on by yourself?” she asked, thinking better of it immediately. “I mean, of course you can. Even Malfoy children only do magic at school. Go on then.”

He hesitated, the brothers regarding each other a little sheepishly. 

Ronald raised himself onto his knees. “We have to talk to her about it, Draco. Today. You’ve got to face up to it.”

Draco stood, looking down instead of up at Hermione. He began with a deep breath, as if about to explain something long, complicated, painful. “Since you’ve mentioned it, Granger, magic at home is different for us. The house we’ve always lived in -- it has a sentience about it, and it anticipates what we need and serves us. Small things like opening doors and turning on water, keeping us safe from accidents -- Malfoy Manor takes care of that for us. It’s old magic our ancestors charmed into the house hundreds of years ago.”

He wasn’t boasting. He was trusting her with a revelation.

She blinked up at him, questioning. “Your ancestors. To share ancestors, the pair of you would have to be…”

Ronald heaved a huge sigh. "Yes. Go on. Tell her the rest."

“She wouldn't be shocked, Ronald. You didn’t hear them talking, before you woke up,” Draco said, smiling somewhat apologetically at Hermione. “Dr. Ann is sharp enough to suspect it after one day. And Granger here has already noticed our noses -- “

“Pansy too,” Ronald admitted. 

“Pansy?” Hermione repeated. “Look, just say it. It’s not right to leave me guessing.”

Draco shook himself. “It’s hard to say it, since I'm not convinced of it myself. I still can’t believe Dad would ever -- but I am taking it seriously enough to do whatever we have to in order to rule it out.”

Hermione nodded. “You’ve come here with a plan.”

Ronald gave another deep sigh. “Yes, we've been talking about it all month but we worked out a plan on the train, while we were patrolling together. I think our parents had to know we’d do this eventually. The resemblance, the way the Manor responds to me like a blood descendant -- there are other things too, parts of the stories they always told me that don’t add up.” He took another huge breath. “I’ve decided to figure out my paternity. Once and for all.”

She was nodding, turning to Draco who was now standing slouched with his head in his hands. “In the restricted section all last month, with the potion books. You were looking for a paternity potion.”

“Yes. The best ones take at least a week to brew. So we have to do it here, during the holidays, and we have to start it today. We’ll need your help, Granger. And then,” he glared at his brother, “we need to move on.”

\-----------------------------------------

The bed in Hermione’s room was fixed and the boys were moved out of the front room by the time the Grangers left to pick up Ann’s Aunt Inez from the train station. There wasn’t room in the car for everyone so Hermione and the Malfoys had the house to themselves for the afternoon. But all they needed was the basement.

“Where did you get all this stuff? I haven’t even heard of half of it,” Ronald said as they lined the components for the paternity potion on top of a disused workbench in the Grangers’ cramped, low-ceilinged, concrete-walled basement.

Draco shrugged. “I found it.”

“You nicked it.”

“Look, Snape would have given it to me if I’d asked. But I couldn’t ask, could I?” Draco snapped. “He’d have put it together in his head, figured out what we were brewing and why, then he’d have gone off and told Father what we were up to.”

Ronald shuddered. “Scary.”

Draco was working to kindle a small, smokeless floating flame with a wandless Incendio spell. 

“There are matches down here somewhere.” Hermione had just made the offer when the flame flared to life.

“No, we’ve got everything we need,” Draco said. “And yes, it’s thanks to the Hogwarts potion supply cupboard and greenhouses. Don’t look at me like that, Granger. It would have taken forever to scrape all of this together anywhere else. Check the instructions. There are twenty-eight separate colour indicators alone.”

“Well, you won’t need all of them,” Ronald began to argue. “All that effort for nothing -- “

Draco raised his finger, pointing at his brother. “This slipshod attitude of yours is why you’ve never scored higher than Acceptable in potions.”

Ronald smirked, “Slipshod…”

“Listen to him, Ronald. Any potion worth brewing is worth brewing right,” Hermione said, settling an immaculately clean cauldron over the flame.

Ronald faked a look of terror. “They’ve teamed up on me -- the two most insufferable students in school. What have I gotten myself into?”

“Like we’d let you touch any of this after all the trouble I’ve gone to,” Draco sneered.

Hermione nudged Ronald aside with her hip. “What your brother means is, you needn’t worry about helping until we call for you, at the end.”

Ronald backed away, moving for the stool against the wall, at the foot of the stairs. “Right. Should I keep a look-out or anything?”

“No need for that either,” Hermione said. “My parents like it when I keep myself occupied with projects.”

“And they don’t mind you lingering in the cellar making potions with some strange, nasty boy you brought home?” he asked, channeling his good friend Dr. Tim.

She turned to him, her eyebrows lifted. “Certainly not with you sitting here chaperoning.”

Draco chuckled. “Cauldron’s heated. Let’s begin, shall we?”

It wasn’t in Ronald’s nature to sit quietly, but after the chaperone comment he didn’t feel like he should wander upstairs, figure out the television, and leave them alone either. What would Tim say? He roved around the basement, pulling tools down from where they were hung on hooks along the walls, trying to sort out what they were supposed to be used for without cutting himself on the sharp bits.

Over and over, his eyes flicked to the workbench under the heavy, buzzing fluorescent light where Draco and Hermione worked with their backs to him. They stood close together, no light passing between the place where her arm touched his. When they weren’t arguing, they were laughing. He wasn’t sure which sound was more grating to hear.

As the afternoon went on, Draco stopped asking her to pass things down the table to him and started simply reaching around her to get what he needed. It looked something like an embrace, probably felt like one too. The third time Ronald saw him do it, Hermione looked up into Draco’s face as his arm spanned her back, and their eyes met for just a moment too long.

“How’s it coming then?” Ronald said, vaulting across the small space almost in a single step.

Draco withdrew his arm, wiping the outside of a vial with a towel. He cleared his throat. “We’ve added as many of the reagents as the substrate can bear for today. There’ll be more to add tomorrow and every day for the rest of the week. But for now, we just have to complete the stirring.”

“Which is no easy feat,” Hermione finished. “It’s going to be half an hour of careful, repetitious motion.”

Ronald pushed his way toward the table. “Brilliant. I’ll start us off.”

“No.” It was Draco and Hermione speaking in unison this time.

“What? You trust him with it and not me?” Ronald asked her. “That makes no sense. It’s my potion, isn’t it?”

“Ronald -- “ Hermione began.

But Draco was having none of it. “Why are you like this?” he was frowning. “It was you who pitched a snowball at my head and insisted I make this for you because you didn’t trust yourself to get it right. Go upstairs and get yourself a snack if you’re that cranky.”

“I am not cranky, and I am not leaving you unchaperoned.” Ronald sat down heavily on the stool, arms crossed.

“Suit your great kind self,” Draco said.

Hermione was already stirring, one eye on her wristwatch. They’d agreed she would do the quarter of an hour of clockwise turns and Draco would do the quarter hour of counterclockwise ones.

She fanned herself with one hand. “The flame gets hot this close.”

“Here,” Draco said, moving behind her and gathering her hair in his hands, holding it off her neck as if to tie it into a ponytail. “I’ve always wondered why you come to potions class with your hair down. Not very practical. Though the more I find out about how sneaky you are, the more I suspect you do it to try to get Snape to feel sorry for you, looking like a poor bedraggled urchin in need of rescue and top marks.”

She scoffed. “Oh no, Draco Malfoy. Don’t you try that with me, talking as if you never have a hair out of place. That won’t work after this morning.”

“Oh, please,” Ronald burst. “Enough with the flirting.”

Hermione almost stopped stirring. “Flirting?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Ronald said, standing up, advancing on them again. “Here, Draco. I’ll hold Hermione’s hair while you run up to her room and get a tie for it. No need to fret about a lapse in chaperone while you’re gone. I’m trustworthy enough.”

Draco scoffed, still smoothing Hermione’s hair between her hands. “Trustworthy? That’s why you won’t need a chaperone, is it?”

“Accio hair tie,” Hermione called over their voices. The air whistled as an elastic came flying down the stairs and into her free hand. “Stars bless Professor Flitwick for teaching us that. Now stand back and let me work, both of you.”

They obeyed her, but not before Draco plucked the elastic from her fingers and twisted her hair into it.

\------------------------------

Narcissa Malfoy was usually not one to stand at a window, bouncing on her heels, watching for guests to arrive. She preferred for visitors to be let in by the house itself as she waited, elegant and poised, in her drawing room. But tonight’s guests were no ordinary company.

Behind her, Lucius paced at the base of the manor’s grand staircase. “They’re late,” he said.

“They’re not,” she assured him.

“They are. Something’s gone wrong,” he insisted. “They’ve been caught and they’re being interrogated as we speak, confessing where they were heading for refuge. The only guests we’ll be receiving tonight will be Aurors with their wands drawn.”

Narcissa spun away from the window. “Don’t you know her at all? Her loyalty? She won’t ever let them catch her again. And if they did, she would never betray me.”

It was impossible for anyone other than Malfoy family members to apparate into the manor, meaning when the guests appeared it would be outside, in the snow, on Christmas Eve. No lights were lit in the manor this year, every window dark but for the small candle flame burning on the grand piano behind Narcissa. The house was a lifeless husk, no children, no holiday celebration, just awful suffocating tension.

There was the crack, loud as a thunderclap outside. Two figures were collapsing in a heap in the shadows of the leafless hedge along the path to the house. Narcissa burst through the door, eyes wide and frightened, barely holding herself back from running to them. 

A screech went up from the pair -- not a scream of fear or anger, but of exultation, wicked joy. And after it, the same voice was calling.

“Cissie!”

“Bella!”

A woman in rags tore herself away from the other figure. On bare feet, she ran at Narcissa, cackling, a mass of matted hair trailing behind her. The women collided on the steps of the portico on the front of the manor, clawing at each other’s shoulders and backs, weeping and cheering.

“Inside, inside,” Narcissa said. “Lucius, help Rodolphus. Bella says they broke his leg in the chase.”

Lucius came slowly out of the house, his nervous pacing relaxing back into his typical saunter. 

“Rodolphus,” he said, greeting his brother-in-law as he slung his arm over his shoulder, lifting him, bearing his weight as he helped him limp toward the house. 

“Lucius.” Rodolphus Lestrange looked terrible and smelled worse, but he was all smiles, chuckling at the sight of the luxurious house looming over them after fourteen years of incarceration in that hellish tower prison on the sea. 

This was the Malfoy Christmas this year, not the sunshine of bright and beautiful children, but the darkness of this pair of escaped fugitives, liberated by the Dark Lord to wreak havoc on the world that had, in truth, been good to Narcissa and Lucius.

He had only one question for Rodolphus. “He hasn’t come with you, has he? Our Lord?”

Rodolphus glanced around the yard. “Not yet. But never fear. He has promised to be along in due time.”

\----------------------------------

Christmas Eve was noisy and crowded at the Grangers’ house. Aunt Inez arrived from the countryside to sit in a chair napping, and Ann’s sister and her family came from across town to eat festive canapes and drink mulled wine and exchange trays of chocolates. 

Everyone raised their eyebrows at the boys Hermione had brought with her from school, but Ronald soon won them over, friendly, open, adorably inept at their Muggle party games. That is, until one of Hermione’s cousins insisted on challenging him to a chess match only to be beaten in three moves. 

Draco said little for the entire night, keeping close to Ronald, looking paler and more melancholy as the reality that their parents were not going to apparate into the Granger’s kitchen and give them a proper Christmas became unignorable.

When the guests had left and everyone else had gone to bed with headaches, Hermione wished the boys a Happy Christmas, gave each of them a hug -- Draco’s much stiffer and more strained than Ronald’s -- and sent them upstairs to sleep in her room.

Ronald lay awake on his back, blinking at the dark ceiling. “Draco,” he said.

Draco lay on his stomach, his face buried in a pillow, as if he was trying to breath it into himself. He didn’t answer.

Ronald shoved his shoulder. “I know you’re awake.”

Draco tipped his face out of the pillow. “What?” He tried to sound sleepy, dismissive. But the truth was he lay beside his brother wincing, his face braced as if about to take a punch. 

The moment had arrived when Ronald would finally call him out for the way he’d been treating Hermione all day -- touching her, looking at her, returning that look she got in her eyes when he reached behind her. It went beyond all the touching, and Ronald might have noticed that too. Brewing the potion with her in the tiny, damp basement had been as fun as a fast broom ride on a sunny day -- perfect. It was as if she’d been thinking his thoughts, except when she wasn’t and she was surprising him with her smarts, her odd sense of humour. 

She was mad, and meticulous, and he hadn’t been able to act any other way than as if he was in love with her. It had to be obvious, even to Ronald, that he fancied her. Now he would have to answer for falling for his brother’s dream girl, and he had no idea how it was going to unfold.

He was certainly not prepared when the question Ronald asked first was, “Why’d you split up with Pansy?”

Still on his stomach, Draco pushed himself up on his elbows. “Pansy?”

“Yeah. What didn’t you like about her?”

Draco flipped onto his back. “Nothing. She was brilliant. But -- you know how it is.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well,” Draco went on, “when a man and a woman are friends, and there’s the least spark of attraction between them -- they just have to try it on, don’t they? Date for a while just to clear the air, if nothing else? They can’t really be friends until they do. You go on as a couple until you realize they’re not for you, and then you settle back into friendship with no arguments. Right?”

Ronald hummed, agreeing but still not satisfied. “Why was she not for you then?”

Draco sighed. “I don’t know. Who ever knows?” He punched lightly at Ronald’s arm. “Hey, it’s alright if you’ve gone and fallen for Pansy. Brilliant, actually.”

Ronald scoffed. “You’d say so, wouldn’t you. Now that you’re lovesick for Hermione, you’d say anything to throw off the competition, you traitor.” The words were strong but his tone was mild.

Draco let out a long breath. There was no point in denying it. “Sorry, mate. I didn’t mean to. She’s just so -- “

“I know. Shut up,” Ronald said. “The thing is, while we were in the basement today, you lovebirds cooing over the potion while I just watched, it made me feel lonely. But I wasn’t lonely for Hermione. It was confusing. At first I felt like I might be lonely for Mother, it being Christmas and all. And I do miss home so much I could be sick. But there was another kind of loneliness too. It wasn’t for Hermione or for Mother. It was for her -- for Pansy. I haven’t even kissed her and I’m gagging to see her. It’s stupid.”

Draco patted him on the shoulder. “I don’t suppose my opinion on it counts for much.”

Ronald scoffed again. “No, of course it doesn’t. If you’re after Hermione yourself, you’re going to encourage me in fancying in Pansy whether it’s barking or not.”

Draco laughed quietly, through just his nose.

Ronald turned onto his side, facing him. “Listen mate, if there’s any way you can forget Hermione, do it.”

Draco groaned, turning his back to Ronald as he kept talking. “I know it seems like it’s all romance and drama, being Dad’s little double and then showing him you’re your own man by choosing a girl he can’t abide. But it’s doomed, Draco. Even if you can convince Hermione to take you on, you’ll just tear her heart up in the end.”

“I know, alright?” Draco burst. “I know. But maybe it’s Pansy all over again. Maybe Granger and I just need something short-lived, light and fun between us, to clear the air so we can move on. Dad wouldn’t even have to know. And then when Victoria Greenhouse, or whatever her name is, grows up, I can give Dad the legacy he’s always wanted without any regrets.”

Ronald sat up, fisting his pillow and bashing it over Draco’s head. “Or with regret like you never dreamed possible, you daft prat. If you ever get her, it won’t be for something light. And even if it’s short, she’ll cram her whole heart into it and leave gutted. So will you. Honestly, do you know Hermione at all?”

“Of course I know her,” he said, hitting Ronald back with his own pillow. “I know her in spite of myself. I know her even though I’ve been trying to stay away from her all term. And look how that’s turned out. Where has it got me? Here -- here sleeping in her bed.”

Ronald was hushing him. “It’s not fair. I get that,” he said. “We’re only sixteen, for star’s sake. It shouldn’t be this complicated, girls ruined by a bunch of ridiculous politics.”

Draco fell onto his back, the bed bouncing beneath him. “Well it is. And this whole Christmas apart from Mum and Dad -- there’s something ominous about it, threatening. Something’s happening, Ronald. Something’s changing. I have no idea what, but our parents doing a runner, Arthur Weasley’s accident, Potter having visions, Umbridge and giants -- it’s all related, it’s all horrible, and it’s all got something to do with us.”


	15. Fifteen

Draco couldn’t sleep. In speaking to Ronald that night, he’d voiced the fears he’d been keeping hidden, the ones that had been mounting all term. He’d laid here next to his brother, late on Christmas Eve in Hermione Granger’s house while she slept on the sofa downstairs, and blurted it out.

“Something’s happening, Ronald. Something’s changing. I have no idea what, but our parents doing a runner, Arthur Weasley’s accident, Potter’s visions, Umbridge, giants -- it’s all related, it’s all horrible, and it’s all got something to do with us.”

Maybe Ronald still didn’t believe him, and that’s why he was able to fall asleep so easily after they’d finished talking. Dear old Ronald and his clear conscience, his happy moods, probably dreaming of snogging Pansy Parkinson, something which, Draco knew, was quite nice.

There was a noise in the corridor, and a line of light shining through the crack of the door. It might be Hermione. Maybe he’d find her outside the door where he could give her a proper hug goodnight to take the place of that stiff, self-conscious one she’d given him while Ronald stood by waiting for his. But then, it might be Tim Granger, minding his uninvited house guests with the help of a cricket bat.

Draco would risk it. He slid out of bed and stopped himself from grabbing his wand, useless as it was outside of school while he was still underaged. With no Disillusionment or Silencing spells, he eased the door open and squinted with one eye through the parchment-thin crack. In the corridor outside was neither Hermione nor Tim, but Aunt Inez, shuffling back to the guest bedroom from the toilet. She’d forgotten to turn out the light and came shuffling back to get it, not in any hurry at all. The light went off and Draco listened to her feet scuff along the carpet until her door clicked closed in the dark.

He wouldn’t bother Hermione, but it would be comforting, calming to see asleep from across the lounge, to hear her breathing. What a maudlin git he’d become. Looking down, he saw he’d carried her teddy bear to the door with him. He tossed it back onto the bed as he let himself out.

With no excuse in mind to explain why he was roaming around the house in the middle of the night, he suffered a pang of panic as he passed Tim and Ann’s bedroom door. How in the world would he have a good reason to be going downstairs right now? As if in answer, something bumped against his legs. He barely bit back a yelp of surprise. 

“Prrrr-ow.” 

It was Crookshanks, trilling at Draco’s shins. Letting out the cat -- yes, that was something people got up to do in the night. Pity these London suburbs for having this beast loosed on them. But it couldn’t be helped. Draco bent and scooped him up. Crookshanks bumped his head against his chin but otherwise kept still and let himself be carried down the stairs.

They stopped in the doorway of the front room. As they were the night before, the red and gold lights of the Christmas tree were still alight, Hermione visible in their warm glow. Draco froze, meaning to get a glimpse of her before passing through, into the kitchen to let Crookshanks out the garden door.

All at once, she snuffled into her pillow, coughed, and turned her face to the back of the sofa. Crookshanks trilled again and hopped out of Draco’s arms, flicked his brushy tail, and sauntered back into the shadows.

At the sound of the cat plummeting to the floor, Hermione turned, blinking. “Malfoy?”

“Sorry,” he said. “Cat wanted out.”

She sat up slightly on her elbows. “Did he? That’s odd. He hates prowling in town.”

Draco crossed and then uncrossed his arms, bare and white, dangling out of the short sleeves of his quidditch practice t-shirt. “Yeah, he abandoned me before I could get near the door. Must have remembered just in time.”

She breathed out a laugh. “Abandoned you. Who would dare?”

He stepped closer, lowering his voice so they wouldn’t be heard upstairs. “I didn’t mean to wake you. Honestly.”

“It’s alright." She waved a hand. "You haven’t slept yet. Your hair is still too orderly.”

He accepted it with a smirk and, inching closer to where she lay on the sofa. “While I’m down here, I suppose I should thank you for your help with the potion today. All we really needed from you was a safe place to work, but you stayed and talked me through it and everything so -- thanks.”

“You didn’t need me there,” she said. He was near enough now that she could reach his hand. And in the golden haze of the Christmas lights and the quiet and her lingering sleepiness, everything was dreamlike enough that she did not stop herself from curving her fingers around the tips of his. Oh, this boy -- he drew her in simply by standing close. Was there any use in trying to resist him?

He sunk to his knees on the rug beside the sofa, taking her hand fully in his, lacing their fingers. “No, I didn’t need you. But I did want you there.”

His face was hovering above hers. He’d pressed their joined hands against his chest, the back of her hand over his pounding heart.

She raised her free hand to his cheek. “Gentle this time,” she reminded him. “Like you promised.”

He nodded, whispering into her face. “However you want.”

“My eyes,” she said. “Go back to my eyes. Like when we were outside McGonagall’s office the day of your fight, only tonight I’m not hurting you, saying all the wrong things. Tonight, I’m gentle too.”

He smiled, remembering how badly he’d wanted his second kiss with her that afternoon, there in the Entrance Hall after being scolded by McGonagall for fighting with Potter and the Weasley twins. He’d come so close, tracing her eyelids with the end of his nose instead.

Like she said, this time was different. She closed her eyes, and instead of his nose, he placed his lips over her tear duct and smoothed the line of her eyelashes. “It tickles,” he whispered against her forehead as he moved from the left eye to the right. When he’d finished on the right side, he ran his lips above her eyebrow, on the taut skin of her forehead, back to the midline of her face, moving in a slow, smooth drag down the length of her nose, dropping off the tip before falling lightly, like snow onto her mouth.

A little sigh went up from her throat as she parted her lips beneath him. By now, he ought to have expected it, but it thrilled him all the same. He heard her breathe in his scent as he leaned into her, pushing the back of her head into her pillow. He was still kneeling on the rug beside the sofa, fighting the urge to climb on top of her. 

Gentle, Draco. She asked for gentleness.

But she had turned her mouth away from his, kissing his jaw now. Without any thought, his head tipped back and she filled the space, her lips warm against his neck, over his pulse. He gasped and she laughed at him. 

“Your neck is sensitive,” she mused, speaking into his skin, her arms holding him close.

He lowered his chin and pulled back to look at her, face to face. “Well, naturally,” he smirked. “Have you never had your neck kissed, Granger?”

She shrugged one shoulder, smiling with a maddening mixture of coyness and innocent curiosity.

“You haven’t,” he said, the breath of each word hot against her throat. 

The sigh she emitted when he opened his mouth on her neck was forceful enough to be a moan. She covered it with words. “Oh, that’s…” was all she was able to say.

The sounds drove Draco onward, sending him kissing lower, descending along her neck, harder, enough to risk leaving a mark, her voice sounding again…

He threw himself away from the sofa. “Sorry,” he said, rubbing his jaw as if she’d hit him when really she’d only fallen breathless against her pillow. “Terribly ill-mannered of me, Granger. A good house guest does not get his hosts’ daughter to make those kinds of sounds.”

Hermione pushed herself to sitting, running one hand through the back of Draco’s hair as he collapsed from his knees to sit flat on the floor, his forehead resting against the edge of the sofa as his breathing returned to normal. 

She sniffed. “Sounds? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. There would be no arguing about it now. They had other things to fight about. “Ronald’s not actually stupid. You know that,” he said. “Today, after all that time watching us in the basement, he figured out something is going on.”

Hermione hissed. “He said something about it to you?”

“Yeah. As you can imagine, he wasn't enthusiastic. Thinks we should forget the whole thing -- “

“But is he alright? Is he angry?”

Draco smiled at his knees. Now was not the time to break the news about Pansy Parkinson. All he said was. “No. He took it quite well, aside from thinking it’s a terrible idea. Might be for the best if you prepare yourself for him to move on someday.” 

She sighed. “Just like last Christmas, at the ball. Merrily jilted by Ronald Malfoy again.”

Draco moved his head, his chin resting on the spot on the edge of the sofa where his forehead had been. “Granger, don’t think I’m above kissing your neck again to prove that you cannot be jilted by him anymore. I'll do it.”

She folded her arms across her chest, faking a pout. “Oh, so you’ve decided on your own that Ronald and I have no chance, after saving each other’s lives, after three years of -- ”

He sat up, leaning toward her. “History or not, you like me. A lot. Right now. And I don’t know how much longer we’re going to be able to keep everyone else from seeing it. That includes your parents.”

She stopped his advance, covering his mouth with her palm for just a moment before he pulled her hand away to hold it in his. “Be serious, Hermione. You’ve got to decide what you’re going to do about it. Can you stand for Potter to know, and what will that mean? And there’s still your parents. The longer we stay here, the more likely it is they’ll realize it's not Ronald, it's me. And if you don’t want them to know, then we have to start acting more like polite acquaintances, at least until we go back to school. No more of,” he gestured at the pair of them, hands entwined, hair tousled, lips swollen, slouched against each other over the edge of the sofa in dreamy golden light in the middle of night. “No more of this.”

She piled her hands on top of his, pressed their foreheads together. “What about your parents, Malfoy? My parents might be annoyed and have a little snit over Ronald, but yours are liable to cause a national incident over me.”

He sat back, groaning as she went on. 

“If it was Ronald that fancied me, there might be some hope for your parents tolerating it, maybe even using it to their advantage in this stupid conflict. But you’re the Malfoy heir, your father’s protege. His noble bloodline and all that rubbish.”

“Stop,” he said. “It’s not as if liking each other means we’re getting engaged. You’re only sixteen years old, for stars’ sake.”

She scoffed. “And how old was your mother when she got married? You ridiculous wizards with your early marriages -- tell me. I know Harry’s mum was eighteen. Molly Weasley might have been all of nineteen.”

Draco pressed her hand to his lips and sighed heavily into it. “Mother was eighteen too. But Father was older. He‘s the same age as the Weasleys but Arthur had five kids by the time Dad had me.”

There was a pause. Hermione cleared her throat. “You mean, Arthur had six.”

He was groaning into the top of her hand. “Well, we’ll know once the blasted potion -- ”

“Draco,” she said, pulling him back on track with the jolt of his first name. “No matter when or who you marry, for you to be with me out in the open, at any point, is for you to take a side in this nonsense -- to switch sides. Think of it. Even if I believed with all my heart in the disgusting ideals of the Death Eaters, they wouldn’t take on someone with a background like mine. They’d drive me away. If I was desperate to switch sides, I couldn’t.”

Draco growled. “I told you. The position I’m in, close to Umbridge and the rest, is actually the best one from which to protect you, and bloody Potter too. At this point, I can’t just -- ”

“Hermione.” It was Ann Granger, standing in the doorway in her dressing gown, a mass of purring orange fur in her arms. 

“Mum,” Hermione squeaked. “We were just talking.” 

Draco jumped to his feet, blushing hotly anyway. “Sorry, Dr. Granger. The cat, he -- ”

Ann huffed. “Ah, but you’re only hurting yourself, Draco. Father Christmas will pass us by if he comes and the children aren’t asleep. Now, off to bed.”

\----------------------------

“Which one was it?” Tim Granger asked as half of the bed sunk beneath Ann on her return. 

She didn’t answer, fussing with the covers, fluffing her pillow.

“Ann?” he prodded. “Darling? What did that cat get you out of bed to show you?”

“Fire,” she said. “Of fire and ice, our little girl has chosen the fire boy.”

“Huh.” Tim’s voice brightened.

Ann sighed, exasperated. “No, not fire as in your red-head. No such luck. Fire as in that smouldering, miserable other one.”

“No, no,” Tim argued. “Draco’s not -- he’s the ice.”

Ann gave her pillow one final punch. “Whatever you may want to call him, I found him down there arguing with our Hermione in the middle of the night.”

“Arguing? Arguing isn’t necessarily a sign of -- “ 

“Isn’t it? Timothy Granger, how can you, of all people, say something so -- “ Ann stopped, her head falling into her hands. “I’m terrible. I’ve raised my daughter to see arguing as alluring.”

Under the blankets, Tim clamped his arms around her waist, pulling her flat, nestling the brushy tuft of his hair against her neck and shoulder, grinning as he told her, “No you didn’t…”

\--------------------------

Narcissa had already emptied the bathtub of filthy water once and refilled it with more hot, clean water and narcissus scented foam. The source of the filth, escaped convict Bellatrix Lestrange, sat in bubbles up to her chin, head tipped against the cool porcelaine, eyes closed, humming as her sister worked at her hair.

“Honestly, Bella, we need to cut most of it off. It’s hopeless,” Narcissa said.

Bellatrix’s eyes flew open. “Don’t you dare,” she said. “Each lock is a testament of love and devotion, of a decade of sacrifice joyfully offered to our Dark Lord. An honour!”

Narcissa sighed. “Suit yourself, you mad thing.”

“Always,” she said, settling back into the water. “Wine, Cissie.”

Narcissa passed her a glass of a deep red vintage from the depths of their cellar. “Really, you should have eaten something first.”

Bellatrix laughed, her cackle reined in by her contentment. “Never.”

Narcissa stood up, drying her hands. “Are you alright here on your own? I think one of us had better go see to Rodolphus’s leg. You know, as a testament of love and devotion to your lawful husband.”

Bellatrix scoffed. “What? Luscious Lucius can’t be trusted to pour the man a glass of Skele-gro?”

“There’s more to healing than dosing potions,” Narcissa tutted.

The cloud of bubbles shifted as Bellatrix shrugged beneath it. “I wouldn’t know a thing about that. Never wasted my time fussing over counterspells and fixes. No glory to be had in that at all. No glory in our Rodolphus either, for that matter.”

Narcissa clucked her tongue. “You are shameless, Bella. Your own husband...”

“Don’t act as if marital devotion has never broken down here,” she crowed. “I’ve heard about the second little one you’ve been raising since I’ve been gone. The one they say came from that Weasley man and the Wizengamot. But I know you are not that kind-hearted, Cissie. You are raising your tall, handsome ginger because he’s Lucius’s bastard out of that Molly Prewett woman. Don’t deny it. I was there at school with the pair of them and know what they're like. There is no Weasley about that second boy of yours.”

“Silence,” Narcissa said, her voice low, like the tone of a dangerous spell. “I am ecstatic that you are free from that hell of a prison, Bellatrix. I grieved for months when you were sentenced, despondent at the thought I’d never see you again. You are the last of my sisters and I will never betray you. But I will not keep you here if you persist in speaking with so much evil against my family.”

Bellatrix cackled without restraint now. “Oh Cissie, you were never any fun.”

Narcissa was on her knees beside the bathtub again, her eyes glistening with tears. “Do not speak of Ronald’s parentage again, not in my presence and not out of it. I’m begging you, Bella. We have every reason to believe he is Arthur Weasley’s son. The Dark Lord must believe this.” 

Bellatrix gasped. “You would shield him from the Dark Lord’s service. Shame on you. How could you, Cissie? If I had a thousand sons I’d give every one of them over to the Dark Lord, with my thanks.”

Narcissa bobbed her sister’s head below the surface of the water. She emerged sputtering laughter, choking with glee at finding her sister fun at last. 

“You do not have a thousand sons,” Narcissa said. “You don’t have a single one. And you have no idea what you’re saying. I will do what I must to keep Draco safe through whatever he is called upon to do in the Dark Lord’s service. And Ronald,” her voice faltered, “Ronald I will keep out of sight, like the son of a stranger.”

Bellatrix rolled her eyes, patting her soggy, matted hair. “Where are the wee darlings, anyway?” she said. “I haven’t seen Draco in the flesh since he was a baby. Lovely in photographs though. Makes Auntie so lonely for him. I’ve loads to teach him before his master arrives.”

Narcissa shuddered. “He is coming for Draco then?”

All mirth was gone from Bellatrix’s voice. “Yes. Coming for Draco and for Lucius. Our Lord is owed a tremendous debt for the loss of Tom Riddle’s diary -- at least a thousand son’s worth. Lucius Malfoy must repay it in full.”

\-------------------

The Malfoy brothers had expected to have to wait until they were back at school to get any Christmas presents, but there they were, at the foot of their bed in the morning, forwarded on by the headmaster.

"Good old Dumbledore," Ronald said, his mouth full of his mother's pastries. He closed his eyes, savouring. "So good. Punch me, Draco, before I burst into tears."

He was only too happy to oblige with one hit, hard, on the upper arm. "Don't bolt them all. Save some for the Grangers, as a gift for having us."

Ronald swallowed "You did something to tick them off, didn't you."

Draco shrugged. "Never hurts to share, Ronald."

"There’s one more gift for us," he said, smirking. "Since Dad asked them to have you at the Burrow for Christmas, Molly made a package for each of us. I can guess what it is. You'll love it."

It was, of course, a handmade jumper with a letter D stitched into the front of it. Aghast, Draco pinched it between two fingers. “What in the stars...” was all he could say.

“Oh, come on,” Ronald laughed. “It was dead nice of Molly to give you one. Unlike this.” He held out a notebook. “It’s my gift from Hermione: a homework planner.”

Draco snorted. “No planner here for me.” In fact, there was nothing in his pile of presents from Hermione, which was a relief since he had nothing for her.

All at once, there was a scrabbling at the window, tiny, frantic claws scraping, a little beak tapping at the frosty pane. Draco scowled. “What now?”

“Bloody bird,” Ronald said, throwing the sash up. “It’s Pigwidgeon, the most manic of the Weasleys’ owls.”

“That’s an owl? It’s tiny.”

“Tiny but keen as anything,” Ronald agreed as he untied the message from its ankle. “Think of it as the Hermione of owls.”

The creature winked at Draco with each of its massive amber eyes in turn. “Right.”

“Ah, bother,” Ronald said, still reading Pigwidgeon’s message. “The Weasleys have had a fit of conscience for canceling our Christmas with them. As soon as Harry let slip we were in London, they sent Pig off with this letter asking me to come visit Arthur at the hospital this afternoon. They want Hermione too.”

Draco huffed. “The dangerous bites unit. Sounds like jolly holiday fun.”

Ronald groaned in earnest now. “And Molly says she’s hoping I can patch things up with the twins. Says it’s the greatest gift we could give her. Bloody hell -- “

“You boys alright in there?” It was Ann, overhearing the swearing as she passed their door.

Draco gasped, clutching Ronald’s arm. “If you and Granger go to the hospital, that means I’ll be left alone with Ann and Tim half the day.”

“And Aunt Inez,” Ronald added.

“No, no, no. You can’t leave me alone with them,” Draco said, his face terrified, his tone grave.

Ronald pulled his arm free. “What exactly did you get up to last night?”

Ann knocked again. “Boys?”

“Just posting a letter, Dr. Ann. Be right down. Thank you,” Ronald called through the door.

“I’m going with you,” Draco said. “Even if it’s just to wait outside the hospital, freezing in the street.”

‘Well then,” Ronald said, dropping his arm across Draco’s shoulders and shaking him almost violently. “You’d best be sure to wear your new jumper.”


	16. Sixteen

On Christmas morning, Draco joined Ann Granger in the upstairs hallway to be escorted down to breakfast -- a short, but excruciating walk.

Still inside the bedroom, Ronald stood at the desk where Hermione had fussed over all her childhood Muggle homework, back when she was in primary school. A quill was gripped in his fingers, poised over a fresh parchment. He went so long without writing anything on it that Pigwidgeon began to nibble the end of the quill.

“Ger’ off, Pig.”

But the bird was right. Ronald was being rude, making everyone wait downstairs. He flexed his hand and wrote a name. 

“Pansy.”

He let out his breath, pacing to the window and back, composing aloud. “Missing you -- no, abso-bloody-lutely not. Right. Thinking of you -- no, no, sounds obsessive. Remembering you -- ugh, like a funeral.”

Pigwidgeon was mirroring him pacing on Hermione’s desk.

“Ruddy mockingbird,” Ronald growled at it. “Right. I’ll start with something about me, not her. Like -- um -- sorry I was too thick to know how much I liked you.” He scoffed at himself. No, that wasn’t it.

“Ronald!” Hermione was bellowing up the stairs.

“Be right down!” he called back. Swearing softly to himself, he noticed a line of Christmas cards set up on the shelf over the desk. He flipped one open and copied the factory printed message from the card to Pansy’s parchment. 

“May the choicest blessings of the season be yours.” 

He paused, biting the end of the quill himself now, sputtering at its decidedly birdy taste, and scrawling one final line. “See you at school, RWM.”

Pigwidgeon was so excited to have a second note to deliver in a single morning that it couldn’t stand still while Ronald tied the parchment to its ankle. Both of them were quite tousled by the time Ronald made it to the window and pitched the bird out.

\--------------------------------------

Ann insisted on helping Draco and Hermione do the washing up after their turkey dinner that afternoon. Based on all her cringing and moaning about holiday cooking, the boys hadn’t been expecting much as far as Christmas dinner went, but the meal was excellent and they all ate too much.

“It’s not that I can’t cook,” Ann said, divining what everyone had been thinking. “It’s just that I hate it.”

Pudding would wait until after they were back from the hospital, and while the most unromantic washing up was being carried out in the kitchen, Tim and Ronald took Aunt Inez by each of her arms and led her to an armchair. They asked her charming questions about Christmases in the old days, when she was a young girl. Her memories morphed into a retelling of a Dickens story, but neither Ronald nor Tim mentioned it. As she went on, Tim sat by the fire sighing a little sadly. Lovely Ronald, cool, soothing and smooth as ice when it came to charming people older than himself -- ah, but he was not the one. At least, not yet.

As they were about to leave for St. Mungo’s, Ann produced a box of fresh ginger snap biscuits for them to bring to Molly. “They won’t think I mean anything offensive by it, will they? I mean, ginger biscuits? For the Weasleys? What was I thinking, honestly?”

Ronald accepted them graciously all the same, and off they went with the Grangers’ borrowed Oyster cards to ride the Muggle bus to the wizard hospital. 

"You'll like the bus, Malfoy,” Hermione said. “There are no seatbelts."

Molly’s note had given them instructions on how to let themselves in through the false department store front. It wasn’t until they were standing with their noses almost against the dusty glass that Ronald and Hermione realized Draco was sincere about preferring to wait outside in the cold.

“It’s alright,” he said, pointing down the pavement. “There’s a lane, just there. The cold is mostly in the wind and if I keep out of it, I should be comfortable enough until you’re done.”

Both of them protested, cajoling him to wait in the reception area or the canteen inside.

Draco frowned. “No, it’s mad in there. You’ve never been, have you? I’ve come with Father to board meetings and it’s always bedlam. No. Look for me here.”

The tiny lane was out of the wind but otherwise still cold and rather dirty. Draco leaned against the brick wall and indulged in a moment of gratitude for the thick wool Weasley jumper hidden under his wool coat so fine it almost felt like silk. 

In the cold, everyone who passed looked furtive, sneaky, hiding beneath hats and mufflers, collars turned up high. In a crowd like that, the woman advancing bareheaded toward him stood out. She was not hiding at all, her hair pink, like a stick of bubble gum. And there was a focus and intensity in her eyes as she took in her surroundings that made him homesick somehow. She walked by him without a word before skidding to a stop and walking backward, peering into his lane.

“It’s Draco, isn’t it?” she chirped.

He blinked. “Who are you?”

She laughed off his brusqueness. “I’m Tonks.”

He blinked again, almost remembering something. “Tonks?”

“Yeah,” she said. “As in Nymphadora Tonks, Auror. Daughter of Ted Tonks and the lovely Andromeda Black Tonks.”

Draco echoed her words, nearly dumbstruck. “Andromeda Black…”

“That’s right, Draco.” She was standing close enough to sling an arm up and around his shoulders, and that is precisely what she did. “Your mother is my Aunt Narcissa, making you and me first cousins. Practically siblings! And here we are meeting properly for the first time.”

She stood back, still grinning at him. 

“How did you know you'd found me?” he asked, still all but speechless.

“Oh, I’ve seen you loads of times before,” she said. “This is the first time I’ve seen you out and about without your father, though. Keeps a tight leash on his cherished heir now, doesn’t he.”

“He’s an involved and invested father, yes,” Draco snapped back at her.

There didn’t seem to be a tone he could speak in that would put her off. Those attentive eyes flicked back and forth over his face, noticing him glancing at her hair, wondering how he could have missed her every time she’d seen him. She winked. “I can blend in rather easily when I have a mind to. Right then, you must be here with Ronald to visit Arthur Weasley in the bite ward.”

He nodded, more guarded than ever now the topic had moved to Arthur Weasley’s controversial accident at the Ministry. 

“I was about to check in on him myself,” Tonks said. “But if Ronald’s just arrived, I’ll give them a private mo. In the meantime, there is something I should show you.” She linked her arm through his and pulled him toward the window entrance.

“I’m not going inside,” he protested.

She hushed him. “Oh, it’s fine. The place isn’t nearly as crowded on holidays. Come along, cousin. It’s time for a lesson in our family history.

\---------------------------------

To neither of their surprise, Ronald and Hermione found the Weasley family a bit off that Christmas afternoon in the hospital. Mrs. Weasley had plenty to be cross about. Mr. Weasley had convinced an adventurous junior healer to experiment with a Muggle technique known as “stitches” on his wound and it had not gone well. 

This wasn’t all. Percy had sent his gift of a Christmas jumper back unopened, which had been cruel and devastating for Molly. The news nearly broke Ronald’s heart. It was all he could do not to rush downstairs and drag Draco up wearing his new jumper to show her that not all snooty, stuffy gits were too stupid to appreciate her care and craftsmanship.

It was the presence of gloomy Harry that held him back from producing Draco. Harry was in a terrible mood already. Ginny had given him a talking to about his visions not being the same thing as being possessed by Voldemort, but he was still extremely touchy. He could hardly discuss Hermione’s gift of a homework planner without snarling.

“Probably needs another go with Cho Chang,” Fred said as they stood in the corridor, observing Harry slumped in a chair next to Ginny at Arthur’s bedside. George chuckled knowingly.

Ronald gaped at them. “How did the pair of you know about that?”

“Well, we weren’t about to leave our DA meeting room un-surveilled, were we? That wouldn’t be very responsible of us, as its oldest, most mature members,” Fred crowed.

"Gave us a chance to test out our Extendable Eyes too," George added.

Ronald shook his head. “Creepers. A man’s first kiss…”

“Harry can never be too careful. He has to learn that. Now don’t start a row over it,” Hermione chided them.

“Nah, there'll be no fighting today, mother Granger,” George said. “I’m sure our real Mum told you her Christmas wish, eh Ronnie?”

He sighed. “Yeah.”

The twins rose to stand on either side of him, each of them with an arm around him. “Come on then,” they said in unison.

“Let’s head back in and show her what great mates we all are,” Fred said.

“Smile for us, Ronald,” George said, squashing his cheeks.

“Fine, ow,” Ronald said, twisting his head away. “What is with you and my face?”

They dragged him off in such a ruckus of shoving and laughing that no one noticed Tonks leading Draco up the stairs at the end of the corridor, moving toward the sixth floor and the Janus Thickey ward for permanent spell damage. It was less like a hospital and more like a residence, a dormitory for the catastrophically injured. It smelled less like antiseptic potions and more like gravy.

“We have family up here?” Draco asked. Since it had taken him sixteen years to meet his only first cousin, he would hardly be surprised if there were more family secrets stashed away in the hospital.

Tonks winced. “No, but our family has left its mark on this place all the same.”

With two fingers pinched to the hem of his coat sleeve, Tonks brought Draco to stand at the window of the closed ward. “Ah, they’ve got company,” she said to herself. She was pointing through the glass now. “There on the end -- you should know that boy from school.”

Draco scowled. “Yeah, that’s Longbottom.”

Tonks nodded. “He’ll be here visiting his parents. That’s them, in the pyjamas. Frank and Alice Longbottom. They were talented Aurors fighting in the war. They’ve been here ever since then, for almost all of Neville’s life. You see, not everyone ended up like Harry Potter’s parents and Ronald’s Prewett uncles. There are fates other than death and perhaps worse.”

They watched without a word as Longbottom’s grandmother held a one-sided conversation for all four members of her party. Frank and Alice did not look at her or Neville. Alice fiddled with something silvery and crinkly in her lap and Frank -- he stared, his eyes drawn to the dull white winter light coming through the high windows.

“This is curse damage,” Draco said when Tonks didn’t continue.

“Yes, the results of Cruciatus curses, one after another, for hours, maybe days. It took four Death Eaters to make them like this. And the ringleader of them was a witch called Bellatrix Lestrange.” She turned to face Draco. “Do you know that name?”

Draco’s throat went dry. “I do.”

Tonks linked her arm through his again. “Bellatrix Black Lestrange -- our mothers’ sister, aunt to me and to you. Her husband was part of the attack as well, Rodolphus Lestrange. I suppose we could call him our uncle, but why would we if we don’t have to?”

Draco raised his fingertips to the glass. “Aunt Bella.” He couldn’t remember meeting her, but there was a picture framed in the drawing room of her holding him in her lap. She had always been something of a legend. He had been told she was brave, powerful, resolute. And this is what sent her to Azkaban? Not some vague, cheap notion of the vengeance of Dumbledore’s henchmen in the Wizengamot, but this?

“Bellatrix did this to them -- to Frank and Alice and to Neville and his grandmother too.” Tonks waited while Draco lowered his hand. She was tugging on his arm again, leading him to a pair of chairs in an alcove, dragging him to sit with her. “I’m not telling you this to make you miserable, Draco. I’m telling you because -- “ She paused, taking a huge breath as if she was about to shout but then leaning toward him instead, whispering. “I need to warn you. Things are getting more dangerous by the day, especially for you. There’s been a jailbreak from Azkaban. It hasn’t been released to the press yet, but word is already leaking out. A band of dangerous Death Eaters are now at large, including Aunt Bellatrix and her husband.”

Draco sprang to his feet, finally recognizing the situation for what it was: a trap. This Tonks person was indeed his cousin, but before that, she was an Auror chasing their fugitive aunt. In a moment, she would be asking him why he was here in London instead of at home in Malfoy Manor. She would be figuring out what had only just occurred to him: that he and Ronald had been sent away, not so their parents could visit the continent, but so they could receive Bellatrix and Rodolphus at the manor without exposing the boys. 

If she knew they’d been sent away, Tonks and the rest of the Aurors on her team would raid the manor, arresting everyone there, hauling his parents to the Ministry to be questioned like criminals.

“Please excuse me. I’ve got to get Ronald and go,” he said. “We’re expected back at the manor soon. It’s Christmas after all, and Mother is holding a late supper for us. If Ronald has seen Arthur already, there’s no point in us lingering. I’ll give Mother your regards, shall I? Lovely. I’m off.”

It was an ornate, awkward explanation but Draco left it at that, spinning on his heel and disappearing down the stairs, navigating the signs to find Ronald and Hermione and go into hiding for the rest of the holiday.

Tonks was barely a floor behind him as he came racing up behind Ronald at Arthur Weasley’s bedside, Harry Potter cringing openly at the sight of him. 

“Dramatic entrance, as always, Malfoy,” Fred announced.

Draco ignored all of them, hissing into Ronald’s ear, “We need to leave. Now.”

Ronald looked gobsmacked around the ring of freckled faces. Molly was still dabbing her eyes, having been moved to tears by the twins’ reconciliation with Ronald. He couldn’t simply dash off now. “Give us a minute,” Ronald whispered back at him.

“Now,” Draco repeated. There was no time to explain everything, so he made up a story. “If we don’t get the new reagents into the substrate soon, the entire potion will be rubbish.”

Ronald’s eyes grew wide again. “Right, just let me take my leave properly.”

Draco gave a sharp nod, speaking so everyone could hear again. “Right. Happy Christmas, everyone. Thank you for the jumper, Mrs. Weasley. It's very warm. We’ll be waiting outside, Ronald. Come on, Granger.”

“What? Why -- “ Harry was complaining as Hermione followed him out without complaint.

“Leave it, Harry. It’s Christmas,” was all Ronald could say.

All through the corridors and foyers, Draco did not take Hermione’s hand. He did not touch her as they passed through the glass and onto the pavement. But as soon as they ducked into the dark, narrow lane to wait for Ronald, Draco snatched her hand and spun her into himself. She made a high, surprised noise which he muffled by pressing her against the front of his coat. It was their first touch of the day and it hit his bloodstream like a calming draught laced with something euphoric. He let his head fall against her shoulder, sighing himself now, breathing heavily, as if exhausted from strenuous effort, but saying nothing.

She melted into his chest, breathing in the scent of him from the heavy layers of his coat. She tipped her face toward where his rested on her shoulder, her cold cheek pressed to his. “Malfoy?” she prodded. “Malfoy what’s happened?”

He blurted it out. Tonks said the news would be public soon anyway. He told her about Tonks, Bellatrix, the Longbottoms, and Tonks’s unspoken suspicions about why he and Ronald were spending the holiday in London. Hermione listened, her arms bent and wedged between them, folded against his sternum, her face turned up to his as he spoke, nose to nose.

“Bellatrix Lestrange escaped Azkaban?"

"I don't know how, but yes. Ronald and I have to fake like we’ve gone home to the Manor right away. Where is he?”

“But,” Hermione said, “what if the Lestranges really are at your house?”

He shook his head. “The way we were raised, we don’t ask questions like that. We just,” he clenched his arms tighter around her. “We just try to stay out of the road.”

“But -- “

All at once, there was shouting -- someone shouting at them, a woman’s voice, and not Nymphadora Tonks’s. It was Molly Weasley. From her place on the pavement, she had regarded them in silence for a moment -- the small woman, simply dressed, leaning into the sumptuous winter clothes of a tall, silvery-blond man, his arms clamped around her, her hands caught between them, maybe in the act of pushing him away, but with her eyes fixed as if spellbound on his face. 

Molly was shocked to find herself calling out to them, but could not seem to stop herself. Here was golden, brilliant Hermione Granger in Draco Malfoy’s embrace in a dirty lane outside St. Mungo’s -- Molly had to act before...

“Draco Malfoy, you unhand that girl at once,” she was saying.

Hermione and Draco gawked back at her, completely bewildered, Draco’s arms falling from around her as she backed away.

“You let her alone,” Molly said, stepping up as if to grab Hermione and drag her completely out of the lane, out of Draco’s reach. “You’ve got no business making off with a girl like that, young Mr. Malfoy.”

“Mrs. Weasley,” Hermione was calling back at her. “It’s alright. I’m in no danger.”

She scoffed. “That’s what you think at this moment, but I know what they’re like -- “

Draco frowned. “They?”

“Mum, what are you doing?” It was Ronald, joining them on the pavement. It was a rare thing for him to call Mrs. Weasley Mum, and it seemed to snap her out of her rage. “Honestly,” he said, “you say you’re coming out to send your thanks to Dr. Granger for the biscuits and instead I find you out here squawking and making an even bigger show of these two than they’re already making of themselves.”

She clutched at his hands. “Ronald, how can you let them -- “

“It’s none of my business,” he interrupted Molly. “As it is none of yours.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” she insisted.

“And neither do you, Mum,” Ronald said, quiet and soothing now, ice again. He closed his hands on Molly’s arms. “Come on, now. Between Arthur and all these vultures relying on you for holiday festivities, I’m sure you haven’t had any proper rest in days. Go inside, find someone who doesn’t need you for anything -- find Tonks -- and sit down in the hospital canteen for a cup of tea. Eh? How’s that sound?”

She batted him with one hand. “Stop patronizing me. I know what you’re like too.”

He beamed down at her, stooping to kiss her cheek. “Happy Christmas, Mum. Ignore that bunch for a bit and take good care of yourself.”

Hermione had come to stand beside them. Wisely, Draco had stayed sheltered in the lane. Molly patted Hermione’s shoulder. “Sorry for shouting, my dear,” she said. “The pair of you took me by surprise is all. Do be careful though. You are very young and very precious to us all.” She winked up at Ronald, took a cleansing breath, and turned back toward the hospital.

Draco came out of the lane to stand with the others to watch her go. “What in the bloody flaming hell was that all about?” he asked.

Ronald shook his head. “I don’t know. But I have a feeling the faster we get that potion sorted, the better.”

\-------------------------

At the Grangers’s that evening, tea was cold turkey sandwiches and a lemon meringue pie as tall and puffy as Crookshanks. Before bed, the young people went to the basement to see to the “homework project” percolating on Tim’s workbench. Draco instilled four more reagents into the potion and Hermione settled in to do the quarter of an hour of clockwise stirring.

‘So the pair of you didn’t exchange gifts today?” Ronald observed from his stool against the wall. 

Hermione’s posture stiffened. “No, I suppose we didn’t. Not that it’s any of your concern, Ronald.”

He made a high, amused sound. “Sorry to mention it. Just trying to keep up.”

Draco turned to him, smiling dangerously. “You get that message off to Pansy Parkinson alright this morning?”

The rhythm of Hermione’s stirring faltered. “Parkinson?”

Ronald glared at his brother. He stood up. “Right. Forgot Tim had asked for a chess rematch. Don’t be too long, you two.”

With Ronald gone, Draco risked standing closer to her. “What did he get you as a gift.”

She tilted her head, smiling into the cauldron. “Ronald? Perfume, oddly enough.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Perfume? He doesn’t like how you smell?”

She scoffed. “That’s not what the gift of perfume means.”

“Then what does it mean?”

“I can’t be sure, of course,” she said, deflecting. “But not that.”

“Well, let’s see it then,” Draco said.

She laughed, a little nervously. “It’s rather -- unusual.”

He crossed his arms, smug as anything. “Well, since he probably didn’t buy it at Boots, I can see how you might find it a bit -- exotic.”

She reached out to swat him but he dodged.

“Keep stirring,” he scolded her.

“Smell it for yourself then. Pass me my bag.”

After a moment of rooting, the perfume was extracted from her bag. Draco unstopped the bottle and wafted the scent toward his face. “Oh dear,” he said, setting it on the workbench.

“See? It’s not a mark of my lack of sophistication. It is truly unusual,” she said.

He nodded. “Truly.” He was fingering the line of potion ingredients, looking for something. “Here we are,” he said, lifting a small silver vial to the light, nodding at it. Without asking permission, he uncorked it and used a pipette to transfer a tiny bit of the silver liquid to the perfume bottle. He recorked both and swirled the perfume bottle, passing it along the flame below the cauldron before uncorking it and breathing deeply.

“There,” he crowed. “How is it now?”

He held the bottle beneath Hermione’s nose as she continued to stir the potion. The scent was still unusual, but now it was pleasing, almost seductive. “What did you do?” she asked. “It’s perfect.”

He tossed his hair, unabashedly proud of himself. “Isn’t it though? Consider it my Christmas present to you. And now,” he said, stepping even closer, leaning toward her, “you can give me mine.”

She covered his mouth with her palm. “Please, Malfoy. As if that will work.”

He held her wrist, drawing her hand away. “As if it won’t.”

“Malfoy, I am stirring.”

He was lowering his head anyway when Ann’s voice sounded on the stairs. “Nearly finished? We’re missing you up here.”

Draco jumped, straightening up and taking the stirring rod from Hermione. “I’ll do the rest. You go on up.”

Ann’s feet were still visible on the stairs when Hermione sprang onto her tiptoes and pecked a kiss on Draco’s cheek.


	17. Seventeen

On Boxing Day, while the adults were seeing Aunt Inez off at the train station, Hermione and the Malfoy brothers attended to their potion in the basement. It was a task Draco looked forward to, starved as he was for anything magical in a house, on a street where the only wizards were under-aged, away from school, and not permitted to use wands.

But today, the fun of it was gone. After a long night of agonizing over what cousin Tonks had said and shown him, the vacant gazes of Frank and Alice Longbottom, Neville’s melancholy face, and considering everything about his parents’ holiday trip that didn’t add up, Draco was tense. He was thinking about Azkaban, his wicked aunt, and whether she might come flying into the Grangers’ kitchen to carry him off.

His tension wasn’t quiet or brooding, but loud and pushy, demanding. After the four reagents of the day were added to the potion, the steaming liquid flickering through waves of colour changes in the cauldron, Draco insisted that Ronald -- who was yawning after sharing a bed with restless Draco -- take Hermione’s shift with the clockwise stirring. She sat on the stool along the wall as Ronald stirred and Draco read aloud from parchments full of hand-scrawled instructions, pointing at a list as he checked it off.

“Look at it, Ronald. Tomorrow’s reagents are numbers thirteen to sixteen: monarch butterfly slurry, jellied tickseed pollen, white currant root extract, and this one -- listen, this one is crucial -- crystallized rhubarb flower. If it goes wrong tomorrow, we may as well flush the whole batch down the drain,” he said.

“Right, I’m looking,” Ronald moaned. “If it’s so important, just do it yourself, when the time comes. Why are you like this?”

“I fully intend to do it myself,” Draco said, sorting the parchment back into a neat stack. “But what if something were to happen and I had to leave? Granger would have no one to help her if you weren’t ready to step up.”

Ronald muttered over the potion. “She wouldn’t need any help. And you’re not going anywhere.”

“Yes, you’re staying right here with us, aren’t you Malfoy,” Hermione said, not looking up from the book propped on her knees. It was from her mother’s collection of novels, translated out of Italian, about monks solving a mystery in a secret, forbidden library. “Nothing is going to happen to you.”

He heaved a deep sigh. “No one ever knows that for certain.”

Before anyone could do any more moaning, Tim Granger’s feet landed heavily on the stairs above their heads. “We’re back, safe and sound,” he announced, sniffing at the potioned air, frowning and not coming any further. “And we think something wizardly might be afoot. There’s a fluffy, frantic bird pecking at the upstairs windows, and it won’t be shooed away.”

Ronald gasped. “Pig!”

“I beg your pardon, Ronald?” Tim blustered.

“Oh! No, sorry, Dr. Tim,” he rushed to say. “That’s what they call the bird. It belongs to my bio-family, so I reckon it’s here for me.”

Draco took the stirring rod from him and Ronald bolted up the stairs in high hopes of finding Pigwidgeon bearing a reply from Pansy Parkinson. Anything would be satisfactory -- brilliant, actually. He’d never read a word she’d written, had no idea what her handwriting would look like. This was progress.

Would the ink be black or something with a little more flare? Of course, black was fine -- better even, classic. Would she print her words straight and orderly, like Hermione did, or would they be all joined up, curving and slanting? And what if her reply wasn’t just words, but something hand-drawn? Even if it was a small and simple design, like a cartoon heart, it was sure to be rich with meaning and feeling. A tiny black heart -- could anything be more perfectly Pansy Parkinson than that?

He barged into Hermione’s empty bedroom, threw the sash up, and reached into the cold air for the flapping, flittering bird on the sill…

With Ronald and Tim gone upstairs, Hermione came to stand close beside Draco. “You’re not alright,” she told him.

“Don’t mother me, Granger,” he said.

“Mothers aren’t the only people capable of showing concern.” She took the stirring rod from him, flipping the quarter-hourglass to begin timing the counter-clockwise turns. “I’ve seen you care for Ronald. I know you understand that.”

“Yes, well, I don’t want you to ‘brother’ me either,” he said, wiping his hands. “Especially not when all I’ve done is conduct myself according to the established best practices of this field. As you well know, Granger, in Arsenius Jigger’s preface on potioneering ethics, among the Five Failsafes he lists training an alternate as -- “

She had closed her hand on the front of his shirt and tugged him toward her, his face coming eagerly forward to meet hers and let her kiss him quiet. The swirling scrape of the stirring rod against the sides of the cauldron was the only sound until the seal between their mouths broke as he tilted away to catch his breath, and then back into her, seamlessly and sweetly. His movements matched hers even though he didn’t touch her with his hands for fear of disrupting the rhythm of her stirring. They were a perfect pair when it came to this, and he returned her kiss as if soulmates might be real, his eyes shut, drawing in her scent, tasting her, her mouth the remedy, however temporary, for the empty sadness that had overtaken him since the last time they had stood here alone like this.

“You know the Five Fail-safes by heart,” she purred into his face. “Aren’t you gorgeous?”

For the first time that morning, he smiled.

“Now stop deflecting,” Hermione said, letting go of his clothing, smoothing it against his chest with her palm. “Tell me what’s got you so out of sorts. It’s about your aunt, isn’t it? You’re preparing Ronald to help with the potion because you’re afraid she might turn up and drag you off to her Death Eaters.”

He sighed deeply. “Their movement has always fed off young people. Mother and father have worked hard to convince everyone Ronald isn’t a real Malfoy, just an inconvenient Wizengamot sentence. When they’re around their Death Eater friends, they keep him away and speak of him more like an overgrown pet than a son -- like something not worth the movement’s notice. It’s bollocks, of course, but they’re all so deranged when it comes to status they believe it.”

He stood back, shivering. “But Aunt Bellla is close to Mother, hard to fool. I don’t see how she could fail to sense how much our mother loves Ronald. And so I, the son they can’t hide -- I distract. Aunt Bella was standing at my mother’s bedside when I was born. She’ll think Death Eater status is part of my birthright, like fair hair and a knack for potions, and I should be honoured they’ve chosen me.”

Hermione huffed. “Chosen you? Whatever she thinks, she can’t just kidnap you.”

“Can’t she?” Draco planted both elbows on the top of the workbench and let his head fall into his hands, groaning faintly. “What do you know about her history with Longbottom’s parents?”

Hermione hissed. “She incapacitated them with illegal curses during the war. That’s why it’s always his grandmother tending to Neville’s business now. His parents’ health is too delicate.”

“Delicate,” Draco echoed.

She frowned. “I don’t know the details. But you say you saw them yesterday, at the hospital with your cousin. They’re truly quite frail, aren't they?”

He blew out his breath, speaking quietly, miserably, as if confessing his own sins. “They’re not just invalids. They’re more like inmates. They haven’t left the hospital in years -- probably haven’t worn shoes in over a decade. The ward they live on is locked. They don’t speak. Their minds,” he slipped an arm around her waist and rested his chin on the top of her head, “everything they might have ever known about each other, or their son, or the Five Fail-safes, or anything they’ve ever read -- it’s all gone. Aunt Bella destroyed it.”

Though she was standing over a hot cauldron, Hermione shuddered, nestling against him as she did. “Horrible. And Neville never says anything...” She stood silently for a moment, considering the catastrophe of a mind wiped blank. She shook herself. “But even if it was your aunt who did that, Malfoy, it was not you. Neville knows that. Everyone does.”

He tipped his face to kiss the crown of her head. “It’s not about the past. It’s about the future. Dad -- he doesn’t want to be part of this any more. Pettigrew, Crouch, Dolohov, Aunt Bella and her mad husband -- they were the ones out looking for You-know-who after he -- uh -- after Potter -- um, lived.”

At the mention of Harry, she stiffened in his arms, as she always did. But he held her closer this time, locking both arms around her waist now.

“Dad went into the war right out of school, but by the time it all ended, he had a wife and me. Then Ronald. He’s not the same teenager who swore allegiance to You-know-who. In fact, by the time Potter started yelping about You-know-who being back, Dad would have been happy to just stay a snob, hoarding money and power, but not fighting. Especially when Diggory died -- that was it. That changed everything for Dad, understanding that You-know-who was out to kill schoolboys, no matter what their status.”

She turned, looking up at him, her stirring of the potion growing slow enough that he took it over. “That’s impossible though. There’s no such thing as neutral in this conflict, Draco. Not for Muggle-born me. And not for your mother, if she’s indeed sheltering her criminal sister. Certainly not for your father with that Dark Mark still on his arm, even if he’s only half-heartedly trying to appease his master by sending you to torment Harry and spy for Umbridge. And that means,” she paused, her chin quivering, “that there can be no neutral for you either.”

She raised her hands, cradling his jaws. “Draco,” she said, “you need to decide where you’re going to stand, and then you have to get up and move there. You can’t stay where you are.”

“I’m here with you now,” he said, gripping her wrist in his free hand.

“And that’s where I want you. But you can’t be here for long unless you disavow your family’s past, and their extremely dangerous present. I mean,” she said as he turned his mouth toward her palm, “what Bellatrix Lestrange did to the Longbottoms when we were babies wasn’t your fault. But what she does to people in the future, when you’re almost grown, standing by and doing nothing to stop her -- that will be your fault. And if I’m with you, it will be mine too. And I can’t have that.”

There were footsteps on the stairs, slow and shuffling, as if Aunt Inez was back. Hermione dropped her hands from Draco’s face and they looked up to see Ronald slouching to sit on the stairs.

“It was just another owl from Molly Weasley,” he said.

Hermione blinked, alarmed. “What’s happened? Did Mr. Weasley take a turn for the worse?”

Ronald sighed. “No, he was discharged from St. Mungo’s this morning. But they’re staying in London a little longer, until his bandages come off. Harry is bored out of his mind, moody as you please, threatening to go off sulking to the Dursleys, driving everyone mad. So they’re asking me to come spend the day with them tomorrow.”

Hermione was puzzled. “Well, most of that sounds lovely. Why are you so glum about it?”

“I’m not,” Ronald said, morose as ever. “I was just expecting -- ah, leave it. What’ll you two do tomorrow while I’m off with the Weasleys? All that time on your own. I shudder to think of it, really.”

“Ronald, we’re not together,” Hermione blurted.

The stirring rod clattered against the side of the cauldron as Draco nearly dropped it. He chuckled miserably to himself as he caught it.

Ronald huffed. “Is that so? Could have fooled me. And Molly. And Ann.”

“Well, there is something going on,” Hermione admitted, unable to look at either of the brothers, watching the last of the sand in the quarter-hourglass run out instead. “But we haven’t sorted it out yet. We need to talk more, plan -- “

Ronald groaned. “Plan? No, that settles it. You’re perfect for each other.”

“Will you shut it?” she called over his voice. “And don’t mention it to anyone while you’re away tomorrow. No one. Especially not Harry.”

Draco had wiped the stirring rod clean and set the lid on the top of the cauldron. “I need some air,” he said, pushing past Hermione to get to the stairs.

“Malfoy,” she called, trotting after him.

They didn’t get far. Tim stopped them in the kitchen, just outside the basement door. “Good news, darling,” he said, addressing Hermione. “The holiday ski trip we had to cancel when your uncle couldn’t host Aunt Inez for Christmas has been saved! Reprieved! Rescheduled!”

“Do get on with it,” Ann said, smirking at him over her tea.

“We’ve booked lift tickets for tomorrow, for all five of us. It won’t be the Alps, but it’s within driving distance of the city.” Tim looked between the Malfoys’ faces for some sign of recognition. Nothing.

Hermione leaped forward, taking her father’s arm. “Brilliant, Dad. I’m sure the boys would be very excited, if they knew what skiing was.”

“What? Wizards don’t ski?” There was something in the way he said it that left Hermione convinced he already knew it.

“Not all of them, no. Not these two,” she said. “But Ronald has to meet his bio-family across town tomorrow and won’t be able to come. Draco will be happy to try skiing for the first time with us though, won’t you Draco?”

“Er, yes. Yes,” he said. “Of course. Delighted.”

Tim looked him over from head to foot, humming. “First time skier. Yes, that’ll do nicely.”

\-----------------------------------------

“He’s trying to kill ya, mate.” This was what Ronald told Draco as they stood just outside the Grangers’ front door, waiting for Fred and George to appear in a borrowed, semi-magical car to take Ronald away for the day. “Dr. Tim has sniffed out your sweetness for his little darling and now he’s out to see you throw yourself off a mountain.”

“Shut it,” Draco said, bouncing to keep warm, scowling up the street.

“Ask her,” Ronald said. “Ask Hermione if Muggles ever die skiing. I already asked and do you know what she said? Yes, close to fifty fatalities every single year.”

“Well, not me,” Draco said. “If I do get hurt, as long as Granger gets me to a proper hospital instead of some Muggle butcher I should do alright.”

“You should be flattered Tim’s trying to kill you, really,” Ronald insisted. “It means he’s worried you actually have a chance with her.”

Draco growled from between tight, hard lips.

“Oh, here’s the twins,” Ronald said. “Give us a hug, brother, in case this is the last we ever see of each other.”

“Get off me,” Draco said, but he let Ronald maul him in a parting hug all the same.

The ride to the ski hill took two hours once they cleared the city limits. With two people in the backseat instead of three, it was much roomier -- room they needed, dressed as they were in puffy, slippery, noisy clothing. The long, rigid bag Tim had Draco hold onto the top of the car while he strapped it down felt as if it contained a load of brooms. It boosted Draco’s confidence somewhat. When Hermione had tried to explain skiing the night before, it had just sounded laughable. But if it was just brooms, how bad could it be?

Draco still wasn’t sleeping well at night and he spent most of the car ride nodding off before twitching awake when he felt his head drifting toward Hermione’s shoulder. Something told him Tim wouldn’t like to peer into that little spy mirror suspended from the ceiling to see Hermione being used as a pillow.

She shook him awake when they came within sight of the ski hill. He sat up, rubbing at the spot on his forehead where the car window had chilled his skin. The ski hill was breathtaking, in its own odd way. It wasn’t a mountain, just high, steep slopes groomed with snow, mechanical lines feeding tiny human forms up to the summit. Once at the top, the Muggles hopped off the line, balancing on what looked, sure enough, like a pair of broomsticks with the bristles knocked off, and tried to stay standing as they gathered speed down the hill.

“Do they ever take flight?” Draco asked, craning his neck to see to the top of the hill through the car window.

“At elite levels of competition, they certainly do,” Tim beamed. “Not bad for -- what is it they call us -- not bad for Mumbles.”

“Flight is not the point, Malfoy,” Hermione whispered urgently to him as they got out of the car. “Do not attempt to fly. Do you hear me, Malfoy? This is all about enjoying some fresh air and exercise in spite of the cold by sliding in a safe, orderly, slightly exhilarating fashion. That is all.”

He was hardly listening, coming up with new questions instead. “Why two broomsticks?” he pressed. “Do they need two to make up for not having magic?”

“For stars’ sake, Malfoy, stop calling them broomsticks. Skis, alright? No magic, just science, finesse, excellent core strength.”

“Core strength?”

“Yes,” She braced his torso just below either side of his ribcage with each of her hands. “Strength and power in the central, most massive part of yourself.”

All at once, she had his undivided attention for the first time since they’d arrived at the hill. He looked down at her hands, then her face, one of his eyebrows lifting, “My central, most massive -- what?”

“Look, just follow the instructors’ directions,” she said, quickly dropping her hands away from him.

He was squinting at the hill, nodding, as if calculating. “I don’t think I’ll need two sticks. One should do it.”

“Honestly, Malfoy, that’s not how it works. You’ll need -- oh wait, I’ve got it,” she said. “You’ll want a snowboard, not skis.”

Tim and Ann sailed up the chair lift in their matching ski jackets while Hermione stood tapping her toe in her clunky ski boot as best she could while making sure Draco attended the mandatory snowboarding lessons offered at the bottom of the hill. 

“What about you? Where’s your snowboard?” he asked her just before he followed the rest of the beginner boarders to the line for the lift.

“I don’t snowboard. I ski, like a civilized person,” she said as the boarders rolled their eyes, the instructor booing audibly. “And also, I hate all of this.”

Draco laughed. “I knew it.”

She hushed him. “Don’t tell Mum and Dad. But I’d rather be at school studying for OWLs than be here right now. But Dad was so excited. It can’t be helped. And since we’re here, you may as well enjoy yourself if you can. It might be the best fun I’ve ever had at a ski hill,” she smirked, “watching elegant rival house seeker Draco Malfoy falling on his arse for an afternoon.”

He smirked back at her. “Nice, Granger. Go on and watch my arse to your heart’s content.”

With a quick wave, Draco was skating away, one foot strapped to his board, the other pushing off the snow. She tracked him all the way up the lift, until he was just a little green jacket dismounting at the top of the beginners’ hill. As she watched him, Tim and Ann came curving to a stop at the foot of the expert run, side by side, synchronized as if coming to the end of a carefully choreographed routine.

“Draco pack it in already?” Tim called to her.

Hermione pointed to the summit. “No, he’s there.”

Together, they watched him pause to sight down the beginners’ hill, crowded with children and people wobbling through slow-going snow plough formations. Instead of strapping in and pushing off into the thick of it, he skated on, making for the intermediate run.

“Of course,” Hermione moaned. “Malfoy, no.”

“It’s not really his first time, darling. He’s having us on,” Tim said. 

She shook her head. “No, Dad. He’s not. His parents never taught him anything but ridiculously dangerous wizard sports. So he’s just -- he’s just like this.”

Ann was casting her eyes about for the first aid cabin. “Well, I suppose we’ll sort it out once he lands. Alright, Draco,” she said. “Let’s see this.”

Even from the bottom of the hill, Hermione could tell Draco had vaulted himself down the hill with a jump rather than a push. “No flight!” she called, as if he could hear.

He was hurtling down the slope, swinging his board from side to side, carving deep grooves into the snow with the edges of his board. 

Tim uttered a quiet Muggle curse. 

Ann whistled. “Hermione, darling,” she said. “You are doomed.”

Other skiers, alarmed at his speed, were turning to gawk at him, stopping to stay out of his way. It wasn’t fast enough, and he sank lower over his feet, a speeding streak of flying snow and green nylon and a rented snowboard. As he got closer to the bottom, he stood up taller, caught sight of the Grangers in the mass of people and swerved toward them.

“How did he see us at that speed?” Tim said.

Everything had gone Draco’s way during his first snowboard run -- everything except stopping. He managed to turn to a stop before crashing into the Grangers but not without sending up a huge plume of powdery snow, coating their hair and faces.

He didn’t expect it and fell back, sitting at their feet, stammering apologies. Tim and Ann were clearing the snow from their eyes, shaking it from their hair. But Hermione was stamping her feet and advancing on him, her curls coated in snow, yelling. “Of all the irresponsible, show off, maniacal foolishness -- “

Tim gave Draco the end of his ski pole and let him pull himself back to standing.

He rose into a stream of scolding. “You had no business getting up to that kind of speed on your first run. You shouldn’t have even been on that slope. You’re a beginner, for stars’ sake! Someone could have been hurt!”

“Now, Hermione darling,” Tim was saying over her ranting. “We’re all a little snowy, but no worse for wear. You alright, Draco?”

“Yeah, it’s brilliant,” he said. “Thank you so much for bringing me, Dr. Granger.”

“Yes, well, you’re welcome. See if you can get Hermione on the slope. She thinks we don’t know she’d rather be reading.” With that, the Grangers pushed themselves back toward the lift line.

Draco chuckled as he watched them go.

“What?” she demanded.

He shrugged. “Their matching uniforms. It’s -- a bit funny.”

She swatted him through his thick layers of clothing. “Like your parents aren’t mincing around with matching haircuts and dye jobs.”

He tried his best to loom over her as he balanced on his snowboard. “Dye jobs?”

She tossed her head. “If you come for my parents, I come for yours. Now enough of your smugness. How did you do that? If you brought your wand up there we can expect a reprimand letter any moment.”

He shrugged. “I did it exactly as you told me to. How did that go again -- science, finesse, and,” he patted his stomach, “excellent core strength? Honestly, it is a lot like riding a broom. Only, without using the hands. And who rides a broom without their hands better than a seeker?”

She sneered. “Always, always a quidditch thing.”

“Looks like it,” he said. “And that would explain why you hate it -- ”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, that would explain a lot.”

“ -- and why you can’t take your eyes off me when I do it.”

“Draco Malfoy, you conceited prat, you made such a show of yourself that everyone in this park was watching to see if you’d survive.”

“Stop mean-mothering me and start nice-mothering me for a moment,” he said, holding out both his hands. “Tow me over there. We need a moment before I go again.”

Taking his hands, she brought him close enough to fall back onto a bench. He pulled off his helmet and flipped his hair. “I think I’m starting to get through to your dad. Am I Muggle tolerant enough for you yet?”

She folded her arms. “Tolerant is too much like neutral. And I’ve already told you, I need you to be more than neutral. I need you to be willing to fight for us.”

He linked his arm through hers, groaning playfully and laying his head on her shoulder. “How do I do that, Granger? I swear, if there was an avalanche out here, right now, I would leap up and save your parents, under-aged spells flying.”

“You would not.”

“I would. And if I survived, there’d be a hearing, and I’d be punished, and become a disgrace to my family for breaking the International Statute of Secrecy for a pair of Muggles, but I would do it anyway.”

She indulged in letting herself rest her head against his as they sat side by side. “I don’t want that, Malfoy. I just want you to tell your family ‘no’ when they act like I don’t have a right to exist.”

“Then they’ll go after Ronald,” he said without hesitation. “I thought about it all last night, while I wasn’t sleeping, after we talked in the basement. If I let Aunt Bella and the rest down, they’ll come for Ronald. That’s how badly they need someone inside Hogwarts. They’ve never said it in that many words, but I know they would.”

“Ronald would tell them ‘no’,” Hermione said. 

Draco raised his head. “You don’t know that. You don’t know what they’re like -- what HE is like. But it doesn’t matter. Ronald will never have to make that choice. Not while I’m standing in their way.”

He was looking into her face with a hardness that was both fiery and cold. He believed what he said. He meant it. And she had never thought of it. 

He hooked his arm under her knees, turning her so she was sitting with her legs draped over his lap. “The best I can offer you,” he said in a low, almost trembling voice, “is to work as some kind of double agent. keeping my place filled, but not quite the way they want me to. I think there’s an adult we know who’s doing the same thing.”

Neither of them would dare say Snape’s name aloud. It was as if speaking of what he did was the second most taboo thing either of them knew. When she nodded in recognition, it was almost imperceptible. “Yes, but he’s miserable, and alone -- that’s no kind of life for you.“

“He doesn’t have to be alone,” Draco said, the coldness giving way to warmth. “He chooses it to punish himself for Potter’s parents. I have nothing like that in my past. And maybe I couldn’t do it alone, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do it. If you help me keep it all straight, I can. I have to, or they’ll ruin the best person I know, the person my parents have worked so hard to keep above all of this. They’ll ruin Ronald.” He tipped his forehead against the cushion of curly hair over her ear, speaking more quietly than ever. “Think about it, Hermione. Help me. Stay with me.”

She turned and kissed his cheek as sweetly as she dared with her parents at large. “Think,” she repeated. “Thinking is exactly what I need to do. Give me a little more time. And please,” she added, “whatever you do, be careful. Don't act alone.”

He nodded against her head. “Thank you. You’re a good girl. Now get off me before you blow my cover.”


	18. Eighteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: I’m a fan of some lovely magic Delancey654 invented for their Dramione fic “The Ginger Malfoy.” It’s a paternity potion that works by colour indicator, and if you’ve read “The Ginger Malfoy,” you'll recognize that potion being embraced, celebrated, and borrowed for this story. Thanks to Delancey654 for creating this potion for us.

Exhausted, Draco slept all the way back from the ski hill, not with his head tipped against the frosty window, not leaning politely against Hermione's shoulder, but flopped sideways across the backseat with his ear and cheek on her leg, cushioned by her thick ski gear. Tim might have been more annoyed with him if Draco wasn’t also snoring, a breach in his typical composure and elegance that showed he wasn’t aware of what he was doing. He had fallen asleep on Hermione unintentionally, and deeply enough to not be enjoying it too much.

Ann laughed over the sound of his rough, noisy breathing. “The poor darling, he’d be scandalized if he could hear himself.”

Tim glanced over his shoulder. “That’s a solid sleep cycle. It’s going to ruin his bedtime.”

“Dad, he’s not an infant,” Hermione said, suppressing a giggle.

“No, but he might be a vampire,” he smirked. “You had that werewolf teacher, darling, there must be vampires too, perhaps that ghastly pale one who does your chemistry classes.”

“Snape?” She laughed hard enough for Draco to stir and throw an arm over her lap.

Tim allowed him that too, pleased as he was with Draco for taking over his and Ann’s role of cajoling Hermione to actually ski while on a skiing excursion. They had been a bit alarmed the first time they got to the bottom of the hill and couldn’t find her, but they soon spotted her drifting leisurely down the intermediate slope with a very patient snowboarder coasting beside her.

“It's more fun to come down with someone clueless, like you, instead of with my parents calling out technique corrections to me,” she'd told him. “You still don’t know a thing about technique, do you Malfoy.”

“Seems like it’s more about going by feel to me,” he’d admitted. “Just like riding a broom. Quick lesson, some safety rules, and then you just feel around for the rest.”

She’d shuddered. “I don’t go by feel.”

He’d curved his mouth into a smile and his board into an arc crossing dangerously close to the tips of her moving skis. “I can work with you on that.”

“Malfoy, not so close.”

As Draco slept in the back of the Grangers’ car now, Hermione let herself rest one hand in his hair as she looked out the window, at the dark motorway. She was doing the thinking she promised to do -- thinking about what would happen to them after they left the peculiar in-between world of her Muggle home.

As they crept through traffic, closer to home, Draco sat up, rosy with sleep, scrubbing his face and apologizing to everyone. It was well into the evening, but too early for bedtime, and they still had the day’s four reagents to add to the potion. 

At home, Draco heaved a mighty sigh as they went up the stairs to change for dinner. And though Hermione braced herself for him to say something staggering or tragic, all he said was, “I wish I’d brought more to wear. Without any wands or -- er, domestic helpers -- I’ve got no way to clean my clothes. Didn’t think of that while packing.”

She rounded on him somewhat gleefully. “Muggles clean their clothes without magic all the time, you daft thing,” she said. “When you’re ready to do the potion, just bring your laundry with you to the basement. Ronald’s too.”

In the basement, Draco stood with a quidditch t-shirt in each hand. “I don’t get it,” he said. “The red clothing can go in with the green, but the black can’t go in with the white?”

“Yes, it’s a rule.” Hermione said, dropping the white school uniform shirt Draco had worn on the train, realizing finding a tag with washing instructions on a wizard-made shirt was futile. “I can’t tell what temperature of water we’re meant to use. If we don’t get it right, we might shrink everything.”

He blinked. “There’re no shrinking jinxes on our clothes. They’re the very best -- “

“I’m not talking about jinxes, Malfoy. I’m talking about -- “

“More Science? Finesse?”

“Yes, laundry finesse, if you like,” she said as she leaned down to stuff his shirt into the hole in the front of a large, white, metal box.

“Well, if anything of mine shrinks,” he said, stepping close enough that she’d be right under his nose by the time she straightened up, “I’ll just give it to you to wear.”

She gasped as, without any warning, he slipped his Slytherin quidditch practice t-shirt over her head. He’d been wearing this shirt to bed every night since he’d been there, and it smelled like him at his sleepiest and cuddliest.

“Malfoy!” she scolded when she caught her breath.

He fluffed her hair out of the collar and smoothed the shoulder seams over the long-sleeved t-shirt she had already been wearing with the palms of his hands. “There. Just wanted to see you in it,” he said. “Go on, stick your arms through the sleeves so you look less like I’m wrapping you up to kidnap.”

She did so, with fast, choppy motions, as if under protest, but also trying not to smile.

Draco hummed. “Yeah, I thought I'd like that.”

She craned her neck to look behind herself. “I’ve got your name written on my back, haven’t I?”

“Mm-hm. D. Malfoy,” he said, fidgeting with the hem that fell to halfway down her thighs, almost precisely where his not-always-quite-asleep-as-everyone-assumed face had lain during their trip home. “You look -- really nice.”

She huffed. “Nice like your Beauxbatons girl? That Gisele?”

He smirked. “You remember her name.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve forgotten Viktor Krum’s name,” she said, folding her arms across the Slytherin logo on her chest. “Do you write to her? All ma cherie, ma blonde, ma belle Gisele -- ”

“Do you write to Krum?”

She tossed her head. “Yes, I do. He writes fluent, lovely English. Speaking is much more difficult than writing -- “

“Ah, oui. Tellement plus difficile,” Draco smirked.

She swatted his arm. “It’s just a shame hardly anyone knows what Viktor is capable of.”

Draco growled. “Yes, everyone adores Krum for his written prose.”

“Look, I know I’m not beautiful, like Gisele,” Hermione burst.

Draco tugged at her wrist until she unfolded her arms and let him take her hands. He stroked her knuckles with his thumbs. “Fine, Granger. I prefer you to be beautiful like you anyway.”

Something in her hated how much she reacted to hearing him say it. Her breathing stuttered, her cheeks flushed, and for a moment she couldn’t look at him. In all their months of flirting and kissing he had never made any mention of her looks. It was as if it didn’t matter, which was nice. But the fact that he truly did like to look at her, whether she was a beauty or not -- that was nice too. 

She cleared her throat, enjoying the compliment but unable to accept it properly. “This shirt is ridiculously too big for me.”

Draco cinched the fabric to her body as he took her by the waist. “Then do that shrinking thing with it. I’ll get a new shirt at school.”

She was smiling now as she said, “If we start shrinking your clothes, you’ll run out of things to wear and wind up spending the rest of the holidays borrowing from my dad’s wardrobe, That is not something any of us would enjoy.”

He groaned a protest into her hair.

“Now, I am going to take this off, wash it in cold water, and hope for the best.”

Her arms were above her head, and Draco was guiding the end of his very long shirt down the lengths of them when Ronald appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Bloody hell, Draco!”

Hermione hushed him, thrusting Draco's shirt back at him. “Quiet, Ronald, it’s not -- “

“Everything alright down there?” came Ann’s voice through the heat register in the basement ceiling.

“Fine, Mum. Thank you,” Hermione sang back.

“What is going on?” Ronald whisper-yelled as he stomped the rest of the way down the stairs.

“Calm down. It’s Muggle clothes washing,” Draco said. “Get your kit off and put it in the white box.”

\---------------------------------

The Malfoy brothers’ whites -- which Ronald had divested himself of in private -- were spinning in the Grangers’ washing machine as the boys and Hermione stood over the cauldron to add four new reagents to the paternity potion they’d been toiling over all through the holidays. The first three additions went in unceremoniously but at the fourth, Draco grew serious.

“Right. This is the crystallized rhubarb flower,” he said. “Watch.”

They all leaned closer as he weighed the crystals on a little brass scale and dusted them into the cauldron with a tiny brush, blowing the last of them off its bristles. Before he could begin to stir, the potion turned a clear, vibrant red, like a candy barley toy.

“Remember this colour,” Draco said. “If we get to the end of all this and then, on contact with a strand of Ronald’s hair, the potion goes back to this colour, it will mean the father is a Weasley. Arthur Weasley, it would be safe to say.”

Ronald nodded, swallowing. “Right. Red. Like everyone has always said.”

Hermione frowned. “I see now. Four reagents once a day for seven days. Twenty-eight reagents, one for each of Britain's pure-blood families.”

Draco gave a sheepish nod. “Yeah. I'm sorry, Granger. It’s an ancient formula, but the most precise one considering everyone involved. I didn’t invent it. I don't like it.”

“What would it do in contact with a strand of my hair?” she asked, bending over the cauldron, as if daring one of her hairs to fall into it.

He shrugged. “It works on a white list. If it doesn’t detect any of the twenty-eight elements it’s looking for, I assume it does nothing. The potion would stay the brown colour it’s supposed to be by the end of the brewing.”

Hermione blinked, drawing back from the potion. “White list. Brown. Mudblood.”

Ronald flinched. “Hermione, don’t. Just ignore it. It’s stupid.”

Draco snatched the stirring rod from the table, wiped it clean, and began the clockwise stirring, the red fading back into flickering waves of colour.

“Gently, Malfoy,” Hermione said, taking the rod from him. “There’s no point being angry at the potion itself and splashing it all over.”

He stood back, sighing.

“You’re uncomfortable,” she said. “You’re seeing this now, from as close to my perspective as you can, maybe for the first time. But I see it all the time -- the prejudice against the Muggle-born is part of so much of wizard life. Why do you think I have to struggle and study so much? Me and all the other keen little Muggle-born kids, like Colin Creevey? Well, because there’s nothing in place to guide or orient us. We have to find out for ourselves what people like the pair of you have known without knowing and enjoyed the benefits of all your lives.”

Ronald was moving to take the stirring rod from her now. “Then don’t let that filthy mess sully you, Hermione. You’re too good for it.”

She shook her head. “No. I am the witch here. And there is no potion, no matter how ancient and vile, that can chase me off.”

Ronald glanced at Draco over the top of Hermione’s head. And Draco felt it again -- the same thing he’d felt watching Longbottom and his parents through the glass of the closed ward. What he’d felt when Hermione was petrified, and when Cedric Diggory came back dead in Potter's arms. 

There was no neutral. 

But if he was going to take a stand against the Death Eaters without offering up Ronald, he would have to be slippery, subtle. He wished he knew exactly where his parents stood in their allegiance to the Dark Lord. If there was any duplicity in them, it would give him more of a chance to navigate all of this. And he was waiting, still waiting, for the fearless, brilliant girl stirring away at the potion, to let him know if she would help him to survive.

\-----------------------------------

On a sofa in the drawing room of Malfoy Manor, Rodolphus Lestrange was reclining, dozing, waiting for his femur to regrow properly. He hadn't missed Christmas when the Malfoys had let it pass without any festivities, having grown accustomed to not celebrating holidays while in jail. Bellatrix Lestrange hadn't missed it either, but she had noticed Lucius and Narcissa passing the day with sighs and longing glances out their diamond-paned windows at the frozen, empty grounds.

She had let them mope. But that was two days ago now. The silence, the lack of chaos, the long grey days, were beginning to wear on Bellatrix. She crept up behind Lucius’s armchair, coiling herself around the edge of it, almost snakelike, and crooned into his ear. "Why so glum, Lucius? Still lonely for your angel Draco baby at Christmastime?"

Narcissa didn't look at him, but she did turn her eyes up from her book, staring straight ahead, into the fire. Lucius recognized it for the warning it was not to reveal anything to the Lestranges about either Draco or Ronald.

He refolded his newspaper. "Bored, Bella? Finding the fugitive life anticlimactic? Annoyed at our Lord for keeping you waiting here?"

She stood up straight, affronted. "No one waits upon our Lord with greater patience than I do," she snapped.

Lucius chuckled. "No? What about him?" he said, jerking his pointed chin toward Rodolphus. "Say what you like about him, but he's a veritable saint when it comes to patience with the Dark Lord. Isn't that right, Rodolphus old boy?"

"Huh?" he bellowed.

Bellatrix sneered at the sound of her husband’s voice. "Isn't it time for his next dose of sleeping draught, Cissie?"

Narcissa sighed, rising to her feet. "As you wish, Bella."

When her sister was clear of the room, Bellatrix sank to sit on the rug at Lucius’s feet, edging her shoulder between his knees. “Where are your sons?" she demanded in a loud whisper, like a hiss.

He shifted his feet to nudge her away. “You are not a parselmouth and I am not a snake.”

She snarled, raising herself onto her knees, her hands on each arm of his chair, speaking into his face. “The Dark Lord could be here any time. We don't know when. But on arrival, he expects complete allegiance from the houses of Black and Malfoy. If Draco is not here and prepared by then, we will be judged as withholding him from our Lord’s service.”

“Draco is already working within Hogwarts to see that the Ministry’s plans to neutralize Potter proceed unhampered by the meddling staff there. It is service enough for a boy his age.” Lucius said.

“That is not for you to decide,” she snapped back, hopping to her feet, pacing by the hearth. “When you took the Mark, you pledged your life to him. All of it, even your children.”

“As I said, Draco is in our Lord’s service and has been since he was eleven years old. In that way, Cissa and I have given far more to our Lord than you have. What more does Draco have to give?”

“Everything!” she screeched.

Rodolphus smashed a cushion over his own ear and groaned. “Shut it, witch.”

Her look of rage was twisting into a malevolent grin. She spoke softly. “A better question might be, what more do you have to give, Lucius?”

He stood up, circled his chair, tipping back the rest of the wine in his glass. “I have withheld nothing. Just because I didn’t follow you to Azkaban -- “

“No, no, no, that is not what I mean,” she laughed. “I mean to ask how you have dared to hold back a son all this time -- not Draco, your other son.”

Lucius set his empty glass down on the mantle without a sound. “I have no other son.”

She laughed, loud and hideous. “Stop it, Lucius. We’re all family here. No secrets.”

“Ronald Weasley is the son of blood-traitors and here as part of a sentence ordered by the Wizengamot against our will. He is my personal Azkaban, and he will be cast off from us when he is of age, next year.”

She was laughing again, louder than ever. “You and Molly Prewett, up in the Hogwarts astronomy tower while her sick boyfriend stood guard.”

“Silence, Bellatrix. That is not -- “

She was cackling louder than ever. "Poor old Weasley probably can't perform. All of those tall, fit Weasleys could be yours, couldn't they, Lucius? Oh, you‘d like that -- "

"Of all the crass, filthy -- ”

She lunged at him, grabbing him by the front of his robes with claw-like hands, interrupting him. “Get Draco,” she said. “No more distractions. No more excuses. Bring me to where he is. Where have you hidden him from our Lord?”

Narcissa was re-entering the room with Rodolphus’s draught. “Unhand my husband, Bellatrix,” she sighed, meeting Lucius’s eye for barely an instant, taking control. “Draco is with the Weasleys for Christmas.”

Bellatrix pushed Lucius toward the fireplace. “Cissie how could you let him? Arthur Weasley is maimed by our Lord’s familiar. Do you mean to say Draco is in London, at the hospital with the rest of them?”

“Arthur Weasley was discharged from the hospital as of yesterday. You can check for yourself, but I have the information from the most reliable of sources. The whole family should all be piled into that teetering shack of theirs by now,” Narcissa said as she eased the draught between Rodolphus’s lips. “Go on and fetch Draco from them if you like. Those kinds of accommodations are well and good for the Wizengamot’s boy but they’re no place for our darling.”

Lucius spoke his part. “But Cissa, it wouldn’t do for the Weasleys to see Bella at large.”

Narcissa wiped the draught from Rodolphus’s chin. “Well then you’d better go with her, Lucius my dear. Find Draco for her and keep her hidden and safe as you do.”

“Indeed I will,” he smiled, and with an abrupt jerk, Lucius snatched Bellatrix by the elbow and disapparated. 

With a yank and a twist they were standing in a dark, snowy field. Bellatrix wrenched her arm out of his grip. “What is this?”

“This is the Weasley home, of course. There might be a concealment charm on it, but we’re here all the same.” He lit his wand and advanced down the lane, toward the Burrow itself.

“They’ve scarpered,” Bellatrix said, glaring up at the dark windows as they came into sight.

“Appearances can be deceiving,” was all Lucius said as he charmed the front door open. He had mastered breaking through the Burrow locks years ago. Molly knew it and still hadn’t warded them against him, as if she wanted him to be able to get inside if Ronald ever needed protection, as he did now.

As the door drifted open, Bellatrix hung back. “Too easy. It’s a trap.”

“You can’t trap a house with children coming and going from it,” Lucius said. “What’s more likely is Mrs. Weasley left in a great hurry when Arthur was injured and hasn’t been back to secure the place yet.”

“In that case we should be looking in London -- “

“Patience, Bella,” Lucius crooned. “Even if we went to London, we’d have no idea where to begin to look for them.”

“Yes, we would,” she snarled. “They’d be with that disgrace of a cousin of ours. Bloody Sirius -- “

“Whose house is hidden by a Fidelius charm and out of our reach. We’d be there following black dogs through the streets for weeks before anything turned up. No, we may as well look around here for a start.” With that, he stepped into Molly’s kitchen.

At the sight of the quaint, cramped room, Bella’s curiosity overcame her, like a wicked, stray cat. She strolled about, brushing by clean dishes stacked on the countertop, knocking them to the floor, smashed. Lucius followed, mending everything with Reparo spells. 

“Come, come,” he scolded. “Be a good guest. We wouldn’t want to leave traces of you here, wanted criminal that you are.”

She was about to cross into the landing at the bottom of the stairs when the clock caught her eye. “Ah,” she said, “I’ve heard of this. Mother Weasley’s spying clock. Looks like Arthur is out of both mortal peril and the hospital, as Cissie said. This Charlie is at home, wherever that is, clearly not here. And everyone else is marked as traveling, except for,” her face folded into a deep, perplexed frown, “our Ronald who is at ‘Dentist.’ Dentist? What in flaming, bleeding stars is that?”

\---------------------------------------

No sooner had Lucius disapparated for the Burrow with Bellatrix than Narcissa checked to make sure Rodolphus was snoring before disapparating herself. 

She came to herself on a street full of densely packed houses, all of them tiny by her standards. She had come to London without pausing to get a winter cloak. It was hasty but she was just a heartbeat below panic, freezing in her robes. And now she was lost, and searching in her pocket for the slip of parchment Severus Snape had given her with the address to the Grangers’ house scrawled on it. 

When Draco and Ronald had left for the holidays with the Granger girl instead of staying at the school, Snape contacted Malfoy Manor immediately. Lucius and Narcissa hadn’t liked it but they had allowed it, desperate as they were to keep the boys hidden and to not attract attention to them. 

But they had to risk it now that Bellatrix and her master were looking for the boys. The Dark Lord had no qualms about rampaging through Muggle London, making it an unfit, unprotected hiding place. Lucius was stalling for time, distracting Bellatrix at the Burrow he knew to be deserted while Narcissa found them and sent them back to the safety of Hogwarts. Bella was mad, driven beyond all reason and compassion to please the Dark Lord. If she got that disgusting Pettigrew to use his rat animagus senses to track the boys’ scent, he would discover them here, in this Muggle neighbourhood, helpless and exposed.

It had been a quiet day at the Grangers’ -- no ski trips, no rides through London with the twins behind the wheel of a semi-magical car that kept levitating at stop lights. Potion-making was finished for the day, and the Grangers and their house guests were sat in front of the television. Ronald was sulking about still having heard nothing from Pansy Parkinson, Draco was trying to edge closer to Hermione without being detected while Tim monitored his progress quietly, ambivalently from across the room.

All five of them jumped at the rapping at the door.

“It’s a bit late, darling,” Ann called to Tim as he left the front room. “Do be careful.”

Tim peered through the peephole in the door. Outside was a stranger. She was ludicrously overdressed in a long, ornate gown but shivering in the cold. She was not much younger than Tim himself and her hair was silvery blond, just like that of the boy sidling up to his daughter inside.

The boys recognized her voice speaking to Tim in the open doorway, offering apologies and introductions. They gaped at each other, wide-eyed. A moment passed between them -- brief but heavy. She shouldn’t be here. Both of them understood this. And along with it they understood that they stood at a fulcrum, tipping toward a life unlike the one they had known up to this point.

But all they said was, “Mum!”


	19. Nineteen

In a silvery brocade gown, a lush winter fabric trimmed in black velvet to set off her fine, pale hair, Narcissa Malfoy sat in a comfortable but shabby armchair in Tim and Ann Granger’s front room. Her long, thin fingers were folded around a teacup with the words “Granger Dental Surgery” stamped in blue on its warm, bone-coloured side. 

“Thank you, Dr. Granger,” she said. “What a bother I’ve been, getting lost on my way and turning up at your door in such extremity.”

Ann scoffed. “Not at all, Mrs. Malfoy. You’re most welcome here.” She draped a woven blanket over Narcissa’s legs -- one they’d bought at a gift shop on vacation in Norway but which Hermione had never seen anyone actually use. Ann tucked the ends of the blanket into the cushion of the chair to keep her guest warm.

Narcissa clucked her tongue. “Please, our children are already such good friends. Call me Cissa.”

Ann straightened up. “And unless you've got a raging toothache, we’re just plain Tim and Ann.”

“Ann -- consider me in your debt for entertaining my boys over the holidays.” Narcissa raised her teacup, as if toasting the Grangers. “We had provided for them to remain at school, but children’s cravings for a family’s touch at Christmas are irrepressible, I suppose.”

Tim smiled rather pointedly at Hermione. “Ah, so their Christmas at school had been provided for. Of course it had. Interesting.”

She shifted from foot to foot, twisting a lock of her hair, laughing uneasily. Ronald and Draco were exchanging nudges with their elbows.

“Yes, I should have known better than to let us be coaxed into traveling over the holidays,” Narcissa said. “But now we’ve been called home early for a family emergency, and I’ll be bringing the boys home with me tonight.”

“Oh dear,” Ann said as the young people whispered among themselves. “I hope everyone is quite alright.”

Narcissa sighed and took a long sip from her cup. “It’s my sister. A troubled, flamboyant soul with a knack from drawing the entire family into her misadventures. We’ll be sorting her out well into the new year, I’m afraid. And since she’s something of a public figure in wizarding society, we thought it best we all regroup.”

She set her cup on the table at her elbow and began to unwind herself from the Norwegian blanket. “Now where have you stashed your things, boys. I’ll help you pack and we’ll be off.” 

Draco led his mother upstairs, to the guest room, Ronald following behind. She looked odd here, misfit as she moved through the Muggle house that, by now, felt almost normal to the boys. As the brothers ascended to the privacy of their room, their manners and decorum were perfectly controlled, though their emotions vibrated with questions about what exactly was happening, and why. They knew days ago that Bellatrix had escaped. Why was it only an emergency now?

The bedroom door closed behind them and Narcissa clutched desperately at both of her sons. “My darlings!” she said as she kissed their cheeks. “You’re safe. Thank the stars. But hurry. There may not be much time.”

As quickly as she had pulled them to her, she was pushing them away, toward their trunks, but they clung to her, questioning. “Mum, was any of that for real down there? What emergency? What sister?” Ronald was asking.

“I told you this was coming, Ronald,” Draco said. “It’s Bellatrix Lestrange, the Azkaban inmate. I met Nymphadora Tonks at St. Mungo’s and she warned me.”

Narcissa startled. “Yes, of course she’d know. It’s true. Your Aunt Bella has escaped from prison and fled to the manor. Rodolphus too. We had heard they might come to us for asylum so we kept you away, for your own safety. That was the root of all of this. Bella was supposed to wait quietly at the manor until -- someone came for her. But she won’t. We couldn’t stop her. She’s out looking for you right now.”

“Us?” Ronald said, stuffing his freshly laundered clothes into his trunk. “What does she want with us?”

“What they always want. To recruit you, to use you, to mark and consume you.” Narcissa went to the window, peering out into the dark. “But she won't have you today. Not if we hurry. Your father is buying us time, distracting her, but she could arrive any moment. We need to get you both back to Hogwarts where they can’t follow.”

Draco wanted to hurry but his hands slowed as his mind grappled with what he was hearing. His aunt wanted him served up to the Dark Lord, but here were his parents, trying to hide him. Their first allegiance wasn’t to some ravening dark wizard. It was to their children -- not just Ronald, but himself as well. Draco's heart beat fast, but a little lighter than usual.

Hope -- he had hope that his parents might hold him up and out of danger rather than dragging him down into it. But what was the danger? What exactly had Tonks meant by everything getting more dangerous for Draco? He was already helping them with Umbridge. Wasn’t that enough? He shook the questions away, marshaling his mind back to hope. And as he did, Draco remembered something. 

“The potion,” he said. 

Ronald gasped. “Right, the potion.”

“Mother, Ronald and I have been working on a potion project for school since we’ve been here,” Draco rushed. “And it’s all going to be lost if I don’t give Hermione some instructions on finishing it for us.”

She frowned. “Your mad, wicked aunt is chasing you to offer you up to the Dark Lord, and the pair of you are worried about your homework?”

“It is our OWL year, after all -- “

“Oh for stars’ sake, Draco darling, hurry,” she said.

He burst out the door, down the stairs, snagging Hermione by the hand and towing her toward the basement door. “Last minute instructions on finishing the potion,” he called out to the Grangers as he tore past them.

“Mind the stairs,” Ann called out.

In the basement, Draco was speeding through the instructions.

“Yes, yes,” Hermione was saying. “Yes, Malfoy, I know all this. Stop. Tell me what Bellatrix is doing, and where your mother is taking you. Will I -- “ her voice broke. “Will I ever see you again?”

He dropped the parchment he’d been reading from onto the workbench and clasped her in his arms. “School,” he said, his mouth against her ear. “She’s just taking us to school, where Bellatrix can’t reach us and deliver us to the Dark Lord.”

She nestled her head into his chest. “Can she really be that awful?”

He pressed his chin to the crown of her head, shuddering as he remembered Frank and Alice Longbottom’s eerily placid faces. “Yes, she can. We have to go. Now. But finish the potion, bring it to school, and we’ll see you there in a week.”

Her hands locked around his back. “I’ll come with you now. I think I can convince my parents I'm going back early to study for OWLs.”

He held her away from him, speaking into her face. “No, you have to stay with them, or they’ll be unprotected. As soon as the potion’s done, see if you can talk them into treating themselves to a ski trip somewhere they’d have to sleep away from here, just to be sure.”

Hermione nodded. “Right, of course.” She reached up to smooth his fringe. “Off you go then.” 

She crossed the room, stepped onto the bottom stair, but instead of leading him back up to where Ronald and their mother waited, she turned, her head still not quite level with his but their faces much closer than usual. He caught a glimpse of her expression as she closed her arms around his neck. Sad, scared and cradling his head, pressing her cheek against his.

“It’s too soon,” she said. “I’m not ready, Malfoy. I thought we had more time.”

For a moment, he stood stunned, speechless. He already knew he touched her like no one else did. There was no hiding it anymore. But she had never stopped acting like she let him come close in spite of herself. She’d been so careful -- telling Ronald they weren’t together, not agreeing to any kind of future once they went back to their real lives full of Hogwarts house rivalries, Potter, Umbridge and her educational decrees, all of it. And now here was the same Granger, speaking openly about missing him. She was sighing into his neck, barring his way out of her house, not wanting him to leave her.

“All the books upstairs I never got around to showing you," she said. "I was going to teach you to Hoover, and fry eggs on the cooker, and take you to a Muggle movie theatre. You were just starting to like Muggles, weren't you? And Dad was just starting to like you."

He squeezed her around the waist. "What about you, Granger? Do you like me yet, or is it still just a fancy?"

He held her close as he waited for an answer, his eyes shut, breath held. 

"Why can't it be both?" she said. "I rather think it's supposed to be both."

He leaned back, searching her face. “Well, is it then?"

She gave a melancholy little smile, like she was remembering the past few days, wistfully. "Mum said I was doomed. She was right. How could I not like you?"

He crushed her in his arms again. “There will be more time,” he said. “I promise we’ll make more time.”

She craned her neck to kiss the end of his jaw, next to his ear. Dipping below his face, her mouth following the curve of the sensitive underside of his jawline.

He couldn’t help but gasp. “I -- I need to -- go,” he said as her lips marked a path descending to his chin. “It‘ll only be a -- a week. Stars -- Granger -- ”

As he’d spoken, she’d arrived at his mouth, her lips covering his, opening just as Tim’s voice came from the doorway at the top of the stairs, not angry, but firm.

“Draco, son,” he said. “Your mother is waiting.”

With his hands on Hermione’s waist, Draco shifted her aside and climbed to Tim’s level. “Thanks for everything, Dr. Granger. I am sorry for the trouble. Please be careful.”

Tim nodded. “You and all.”

Narcissa looked more out of place than ever, standing by the front door wearing an old ski jacket of Ann’s, striped with diagonal lines in magenta and neon green. At least she’d be warm while they moved about town. She didn’t want to discomfit the Grangers by disapparating in front of them, so she took their leave at the door before guiding the boys back into the street. She left Ann Granger with a pair of opal earrings as a gift of thanks which Ann refused four times before finally accepting.

“Never fear. They aren't cursed,” she said, kissing Ann’s cheek. “Do take care all the same.”

\----------------------------

Narcissa Malfoy took each of her sons’ hands and disapparated from the Grangers’ front garden. Their destination was not Hogwarts, but to Diagon Alley, to the Leaky Cauldron where they could access the Floo Network and arrive at the school from somewhere completely unremarkable and within wizarding London. 

Without a word to the innkeeper, Narcissa directed the boys to the Floo. “Just say Hogwarts,” she advised. “You‘re both students. It will let you in without resistance. I'll come last with the parent password.”

The door of the pub crashed open and Ronald turned to see two heavily cloaked figures enter. One kept flickering in and out of view, as if they were under a Disillusionment spell but too noisy and ballistic to be contained by it. The other person also had their face hidden but they had a familiar, haughty posture, and a drawling voice Ronald would have known anywhere. He flipped his hood over his ginger head and nudged his mother.

“How should I know?" the drawing voice was saying, talking loudly, as if sounding an alarm of his coming. He was arguing with the partially Disillusioned person beside him as he steered them away from the fireplace to the back of the crowded room. "I expect it's nothing but some Muggle-loving fun on Arthur Weasley’s part, including a space for ‘dentist’ on his clock...Yes, I told you. It's a Muggle occupation for caring for strangers’ teeth...No, not blood magic, but I see why you would think so. No, it’s medicine, a kind of healing...Absolutely not. It's impossible the boys are in Muggles London...Because it's all just a joke, I tell you. A bad joke. And even if it wasn't, there are hundreds of these dentists in the city, where would we even begin…”

There was a flash of green as Draco flamed out of sight. Narcissa, hidden beneath the hood of Ann’s old jacket, was shoving Ronald into the fireplace behind him. “Hurry! Go!"

He called out the name of the school as loudly as he dared and the pub vanished from view. In an instant, Ronald was staggering, sooty, stepping into the Hogwarts Entrance Hall. Draco was already there, sitting on his trunk, his ash-smeared face positively heartsick. Standing above both of them was Professor Snape.

He sneered at Ronald, as if disappointed to see him. "Where is she?"

"She?" Ronald repeated.

"Your mother," Snape said, abandoning Ronald to speak to Draco. "Where is she? Is she safe?"

Draco nodded at the fireplace. "She was right behind us."

The three of them watched the low, orange flames in silence.

"It might not be as easy as just hopping through," Ronald said. "Right as Draco left, they came into the pub."

"Who?" Snape snapped.

"Father, and -- ” He stopped, not at all sure how to answer.

“And Bellatrix Lestrange,” Snape finished for him. 

Ronald nodded. “Yeah. I’m not sure if she saw us. Draco and I didn’t stay long. And Mother was wearing a ridiculous, flashy Muggle skiing coat like a disguise. But -- why hasn’t she come through yet?”

Snape grimaced. “Do not move,” he said, stepping onto the hearth himself. But at that moment, a new jet of green flame flared and Narcissa was tripping into Snape’s arms.

“Severus,” she said, clutching his robes as she caught her breath. “Change the Floo password. Do it at once before she follows.”

Snape set her back on her feet. “She cannot use the password.”

“No, but Lucius is with her. She may force him,” Narcissa said.

The boys waited for Snape to laugh off the suggestion, to give his biggest sneer of the evening at the idea of that cranky witch, their auntie, half-starved from a long prison term, forcing their father to surrender the password keeping his family safe.

Snape did not laugh. Instead he drew his wand, waving and chanting. Flames came trailing out of the Floo, snaking along the floor, up his leg, down his arm, twining around his wand before shooting back into the grate.

Snape pocketed his wand. “There, Cissa. That is most inconvenient. We will have to notify every other parent, but there you have it.”

She seized his hand in both of hers. “Thank you, Severus.”

He let her continue to hold his hand as he spoke to the boys, as if it gave him even more authority than he already had as a teacher. “I am sure your parents have disciplined you sternly for leaving school without their permission. No doubt they have impressed upon you the importance of following their orders rather than romantic impulses to toddle after female classmates all over the country without thought to the wisdom or safety of your actions.”

Narcissa had done no such thing, as Snape well knew. But his lecture did inspire her motherly concern. She dropped his hand and asked. “Oh, yes. Which one of you is in love with the bushy-haired Granger girl?”

It was a tactical move. She spoke the words and watched their faces to see which of them flinched the hardest at a description meant to sound unflattering. But each of them had great affection for Hermione’s wild hair and neither of them flinched at hearing it described as it was. Ronald smiled crookedly to himself and Draco blinked dreamily, both of them looking at the floor. 

“Oh, come now,” she said. “This holiday sleepover wasn’t an act of friendship.”

There was no use arguing the point. One of them had to admit it. If Draco owned up to it, as the pure-blood heir of the Malfoy and Black lines, there might be a family crisis. If Ronald admitted to it, he would provoke disappointment and worry, but he probably wouldn’t wind up locked in a cellar. They both knew it.

“Me,” Ronald said. “It was me. Fancied her since second year. Sorry.”

Snape’s eyes narrowed, as if he was considering the events of the past three years. Yes, Ronald liking Granger was plausible, even probable. As for Draco -- it should have been impossible, but something was strange there as well.

Narcissa sighed. She stepped forward and raised Draco to standing, kissing his cheeks before turning to Ronald. “We haven’t got time to talk about this,” she said. “I need to get back to the manor and report that you’re here before anyone can tell I’m the one who brought you. But your father is going to hate this, Ronald. Find someone else.” 

He hung his head as she kissed him, patted his freckled cheeks, and turned back to the Floo.

“He won’t hate it,” Ronald protested. “He likes me to stay close to Harry. And Hermione is his other best friend so it’s perfect. It brings us all closer together.“

“Ronald, no,” she said. “It is not perfect. And now I’ll be leaving.”

“Not without the new password you won’t,” Snape said, taking her aside to reveal it to her. They might have had more to say to each other, as they appeared from a distance to be whispering urgently into one another’s faces.

Draco dropped a hand heavily on Ronald’s shoulder as their mother flamed away. “Thanks,” he said.

Ronald growled. “Consider it repayment for brewing the potion. G’night.” he lifted his trunk and dragged it toward the staircase. 

“Stop right there, Mr. Malfoy,” Snape said, calling Ronald back. “Thanks to your foolishness, and the madness of her sister, your mother is too frantic and distracted to properly instruct you, so I take it upon myself.” He shot a glare between the brothers. “Neither of you are to leave the school for the rest of the holidays. Your aunt will be watching, waiting for it, cajoling your parents to call you out. You must think of every excuse to decline. You must remain here. Do you understand?”

Ronald dropped his trunk. “No, I don’t,” he said. “I don’t understand any of this. All of a sudden, we’ve got this mad aunt who hunts us the way You-know-who hunts Harry. And we’re supposed to be afraid of her and hide in here until -- until the stars know when?”

Snape smirked. “Come, Ronald, it sounds as if you understand the situation perfectly.”

“What do they want from us?” Ronald demanded. “We’re not the boys who lived. We're not chosen ones. We’re just a pair of spoiled F-boys.”

Unlike most of the adults in the boys’ lives, Snape believed children thrived best in a climate of hard, unyielding, frankly spoken truth. In the spirit of this, he swept his wand around his head and all the lanterns in the empty Entrance Hall burned so low it was almost dark. In the dimness, he raised his sleeve, baring his left arm, and the familiar black brand burned into his flesh. 

“The Dark Lord has your father,” Snape said. “And in that way, he has you. If they want a student operative in Hogwarts -- and they do -- they won’t choose one at random. They’ll choose from among the students with families already corrupted by this stain.”

Draco had sunk to sit on his trunk again, his head in his hands.

Snape continued. “And when they choose from among those students, they won’t choose dimwits like Gregory Goyle or Vincent Crabbe. They won’t choose a delicate, motherless waif like Theodore Nott. No. They’ll find the brightest, strongest student they can.”

Ronald frowned. “Brightest -- but that’s -- “ he faltered. “That would be -- “

Snape slid his sleeve back into place. “Yes, Ronald, that would be Draco. It’s already begun. The needling of Potter, the support of Professor Umbridge -- while you have played at heroics with Harry Potter, your brother has been shouldering the load of the Death Eaters, alone. If you cannot help him, the least you could do would be to thank him. Ronald Malfoy, you are at a crux where you must either denounce or defend your family.”

Draco stood up. “No,” he said. “Thank you, Professor, but no. This is not what I want. Stay a hero, Ronald.” He was leaving, marching across the hall with his trunk, disappearing down the stairs to the Slytherin dungeon.

Snape shook his head, spun on his heel and swooped toward his own basement apartments, the lanterns returning to full strength as he went.

Ronald stood alone, and watched his brother go.

_________________

Narcissa arrived at the manor just minutes before Lucius came back with Bellatrix. She barely had time to vanish Ann’s old coat and warm her hands and face over the fire, as if she’d been lounging in the drawing room, watching over a sleeping Rodolphus all night. 

Lucius and Bellatrix told her how they’d been to the empty Burrow, had a drink at the Leaky Cauldron, roamed Diagon Alley looking for black dogs and dental offices. Narcissa blinked her bright grey eyes and innocently asked what in the world they meant by “dentist.” 

Then she told her own story.

“Yes, the Weasleys sent an owl not long after you left,” Narcissa said. “Most unfortunate timing. But they said the boys were bored with being cooped up watching Arthur recover so they went back to school early to study for their OWLs. Draco is quite serious about them. Wants an O in everything, the darling boy. At any rate, they took the Floo network into Hogwarts tonight. I’ve confirmed it with Severus.”

Lucius raised both his eyebrows. “There you are, Bella. Now all you need do is stroll into Hogwarts, right under Dumbledore’s nose, and get them.”

She snarled and fell to sit at the end of the sofa, almost crashing into Rodolphus’s broken leg. “Dumbledore can’t hide them in there forever. Our Lord will have them yet.”

Lucius clucked his tongue. “If the Dark Lord’s priorities are unchanged since our last gathering, if he still desires the prophecy and Potter more than anything, I have a plan to procure both for him without setting foot in Hogwarts. We can accomplish all our Lord desires within the walls of the Ministry itself, in the Department of Mysteries.”

She scoffed. “You’re all talk, you useless thing. Bringing the Dark Lord both the prophecy and Potter -- it’s beyond you. Why, tonight you couldn’t even bring him your own children.”

“Bella, hush,” Narcissa scolded, taking Lucius’s hand. “What a night you’ve had, darling, out in the cold chasing phantoms all over the country. Let’s turn in.”

The door closed behind the Malfoys, leaving the Lestranges alone on the sofa before the fire. 

“Useless thing?” Rodolphus rasped, rolling his head from beneath a cushion. “I thought that was your pet name for me, dearest crone.”

She swore dispassionately at him.

He was propping himself to sit. “I'll tell you something of use,” he said. “That sister of yours, as soon as you left with her fancy man, she was off. Disapparated while she thought I was asleep. Didn’t return until moments before yourselves. Came back wearing some flashy Muggle coat.”

“Muggle coat -- ridiculous. Mind your own business, Rodolphus,” Bellatrix snapped. “What are you like? You’ve been lying here potioned out of your mind for days. I’ve a mind to keep you here like this forever.”

He chuckled. “And I’ve a mind to stay this way. But mark my words, crone. There was no time for your sister to receive an owl between her coming and going. There was no word from the Weasley woman tonight. The one that got those boys safely to Hogwarts was Madam herself. She knew right where they were, and where they needed to go.” He settled onto his back again. “Make of that what you will. And fetch me my draught.”

\---------------------------

Draco lay in bed in the empty Slytherin dormitory. After sleeping nose-to-nose with Ronald for days, it was lonelier than ever. He wondered how his brother was getting on, especially now that Snape had given him so much to think about.

He wished his parents would send word on where Bellatrix was, what she was doing -- whether she was outside the Grangers’ house about to rain hell on it, or whether they’d be safe tonight. 

He should have stayed to protect them. 

No, his presence was what was putting them in danger. 

He had to leave. 

Didn’t he? 

He kept going over it, every way, again and again. He didn’t know what the best thing to do would have been, so he let his mother decide for him. 

That had to stop.

One thing Draco did know for sure was that he missed Hermione. He missed her fiercely, like homesickness. They had lived together in that simple little house for six days. They had gone on long bus and car rides, done housework, worked magic on the potion, sat and done nothing at all and he hadn’t been cross or bored with her through any of it. 

In all that time, they’d been crowded and chaperoned so closely that he’d managed to properly snog her just twice, late on Christmas Eve and again over the potion. And even without a steady stream of kisses, he had connected to her anyway, liked her anyway -- liked her better than ever before. This wasn’t attraction alone. He had fallen for Hermione Granger.

What was it she had said to him, on the basement stairs as he tried to leave? How could she not like him? Was that the same as telling him that she did like him? It must have been. How would he know if he couldn’t even see her for at least another week?

The lake overhead, outside his window, was dark and suffocating. He threw his covers off and sat up. He couldn’t stay down here alone. He needed air and light, a walk up to the owlery to send Hermione a message, letting her know they had made it back safely. He’d use a school owl, not one someone from the manor might recognize.

He reached for the trousers he’d been wearing earlier, the ones that still smelled like the Grangers’ laundry cleaning potions. The fabric was hot on one side. There was something burning inside the pocket.

He summoned it out to avoid touching it. There it lay on his bed, a galleon with a bow tied around it, as if it was a Christmas present. The bow was made from two ribbons twisted together, one red and one green. Hermione must have slipped it into his pocket, there on the stairs. There was no note, but Draco knew at once it wouldn’t need one. This was a Protean charmed galleon signalling a message for him. 

“Merry Christmas, Malfoy. Sorry your present is late. I’ve gone to bed with your modified perfume dabbed on my wrists, but it’s keeping me awake. We are safe and wish the same for you, always.” 

It was signed without a name, just two hearts molten out of the galleon’s metal.


	20. Twenty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: I’m a fan of some lovely magic Delancey654 invented for their Dramione fic “The Ginger Malfoy.” It’s a paternity potion that works by colour indicator, and if you’ve read “The Ginger Malfoy,” you'll recognize that potion being embraced, celebrated, and borrowed for this story. Thanks to Delancey654 for creating this potion for us.

The Malfoy brothers had different ideas about the best ways to welcome the rest of the students to Hogwarts after Christmas holidays. As travelers streamed into the school from carriages and Floos, Draco stayed in the vanished room on the fifth floor, preparing to put Ronald’s paternity potion to use.

Ronald, on the other hand, stood in a niche behind the statutes of stone soldiers cut out of the castle walls along the main entrance. He seemed to do well with Pansy when he pulled her into niches and alcoves, so he waited there for her. As the low January shadows turned to darkness, he watched as Hermione arrived, charging ahead of the first carriage-load of students, her prefect’s badge gleaming in the lantern light. 

Pansy came with the final carriage, her prefect’s badge knocked askew on the front of her cloak. In his niche, Ronald’s hands were nearly as cold and stiff as the statue he’d hidden behind. He darted out as quickly as he could.

She yelped as he caught her hand in his.

“Quiet, Parkinson. It’s only me.”

Pansy’s eyes were wide, almost frightened. “Ronald -- you’re frozen solid. What are you doing out here?“

“I couldn’t wait,” he said. “I mean, I did wait. I’ve waited since Christmas Day for you to return my owl but -- “

She scoffed. “That message? The one about ‘the choicest blessings of the season?’”

He smirked. “Is that what it said? I’d forgotten, honestly. I copied it off a Christmas card at the Grangers.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “That was the first word I had from you after the question I put to you on the road to Hogsmeade at the beginning of the holidays. And you couldn’t even be bothered to write something in your own words.”

Ronald’s heart sank. “Pansy, no. No, no, I agonized over what to write. I wanted it to be perfect. But it was Christmas morning, and everyone was waiting, shouting and banging on the door. I panicked. There was so little time and -- the hospital -- the stupid bird -- “

“The choicest blessings?” she interrupted, not ready to hear his explanations yet. “The last thing I said to you was ‘choose me’ and you write back to me with this -- this bizarre statement about whatever ‘choicest’ was supposed to mean. Choice? Really Ronald? It made hardly any sense, but just enough to keep me fretting over it -- “

He was groaning, shuffling his feet on the cold stone floor of the niche. “No, it wasn’t meant to be a puzzle.”

“Well it was,” she snapped. “A perfect brain teaser, unsolvable, the first thing I thought about every morning, and the last thing I thought about at night.”

He flung both his arms around her with such force she barely had time to turn her face before he mashed her cheek into the front of himself. It wasn’t seductive but desperate. “It’s all my fault. I’m sorry,” Ronald said. “I didn’t want to upset you. I just -- wanted -- you.”

Pansy gasped, pushing away from his chest so she could read his face. “You what?”

“I choose you,” he said, holding her close, looking down into her face, still sorry and scared. “Of course I do. I’ve been imagining myself saying it for weeks, and in my head it never went as stupidly as this but -- please Pansy, I’m mad for you.”

“You choose me over -- everyone else?”

“There isn’t anyone else,” he said, crossing his arms behind her. “The Hermione thing -- it was a habit we both outgrew. Please, Pansy, choose me back. I’ll understand if I’ve blown all my chances and have to start over. I will if you want.”

She hopped against him. “Not at all.” She was looking up at him from beneath the line of her fringe, her eyelashes dark and lush, suddenly so sweet and happy Ronald couldn’t help himself and bent to brush his long, straight nose against her little turned-up nose.

“How is that?” he said. “Non-lip facial contact. Was it alright? Too much?”

She smiled. “It’s freezing. Your nose must be numb with cold. You didn’t even feel that, did you?”

“Sure I did.”

She pulled her gloves off and warmed his cheeks with her bare hands. “You poor, foolish boy. How long have you been out here?”

He shrugged. “Since before the first carriage. I didn’t want to miss you any longer than I had to.”

She made a soft, pitying sound. “You must get indoors right away.”

When she moved to lead him to the entrance, he held her in place, face to face with him behind the warrior statue. “It’s so nice and private here though. The perfect place to share a first -- uh…”

She shook her head. “Absolutely not, Ronald Malfoy. If your lips are as numb from cold as your nose, you’ll be convinced you’re cursed by prenatal love potion exposure. No, after all the hard labour we put in last term, I will not kiss you under anything but ideal circumstances.

He groaned a complaint. “But my mouth isn’t cold. Here, try it.”

She covered his lips with her palm as he bent toward her. It could have been to stop him from snogging her, or it could have been an excuse to have him kiss her hand again. “I will not try it. Not yet.”

He was groaning again, his face tipping into the collar of her cloak, his icy cold nose drawn to the burning warmth of her throat. She laughed and squealed as he nuzzled closer, her hand pinned between them, shivers rising from her head to the backs of her knees.

“Mr. Malfoy,” a voice called out to Ronald from just inside the entrance. It was Professor MacGonagall, about to shut the doors for the evening and doing one final, badly needed survey of the grounds. She gave a single shake of her head as he straightened up and Pansy’s face came into view. “And Miss Parkinson. Right this way, if you please.” She swooped an arm, beckoning them into the cheery but somehow unwelcome orange light of the castle.

\--------------------------------------

Draco had signalled Hermione through the galleon to let her know he was in the vanished room and that she was to bring the finished paternity potion there as soon as she’d finished her duties. Everything was nearly ready when she came through the false wall carrying the potion in her hands. It was in the glass bottle he’d left at the Grangers’ house, tightly corked, its liquid bronzy brown, shiny and thin, like maple syrup.

At the sound of her footsteps, he spun around from where he was working at the room’s single table. They’d been expecting to see each other, but their cheeks flushed pink all the same.

Muscling past the shyness, Draco took three quick steps toward her, rolling his sleeves up his arms as he came. The sight of him coming toward her was dazzling, overwhelming, and Hermione balked and held the bottle between them.

“Does it really look like mud?” she asked.

He didn’t pause but kept stepping toward her, nudging past the bottle to slide his arms under hers. He pressed her against himself, rocking the both of them as he sighed into her hair. “No, it looks like brandy, a fine, beautiful, priceless brandy.”

His neck was against her face and she was breathing in his scent, her involuntary little hum sounding between them. “I would have said maple syrup myself,” she managed to say. “And not the cheap kind from a shop. The nice kind that people bring back from ski trips to Canada.”

He stood up straight to smirk at her. “You convinced your parents to go skiing in Canada? It’s a bit overkill. I was thinking more like Switzerland when I suggested it. But well done, Granger.”

“We just stayed at home, actually,” she admitted. “I don’t know what your mother did, but we had no problem with escaped Death Eaters coming ‘round.”

He winced. “Listen, you have to take it seriously when I tell you something’s dangerous.”

“I did,” she chirped. “I was vigilant, constantly.” She held the potion between them again. “And I would have had to stay at home to protect this anyway. It does look perfect, doesn’t it? This is some fine work of ours.”

He nodded. “Yeah, it is. All that’s missing to finish it off is Ronald himself.”

She let the weight of the potion straighten her arm, the bottle hanging at her side as Draco still held her. “Well, what do we do until he gets here?”

Without letting go of her, Draco walked the pair of them backward, toward the table. “We could do what most people our age would do upon finding themselves alone with a person they can’t help but like.”

She ducked her head, laughing at herself for impulsively confessing to him on her parents’ basement stairs the last time they spoke. They were close enough to the table for her to set the potion down on it. With her hands free, she linked them around Draco’s neck, her fingertips grazing his hair.

“We’ve been prefects for months now,” he was saying. “We know all the best spots in the school to hide away and snog uninterrupted for hours on end, but we’ve never put this knowledge to proper use.”

She scoffed. “The fact that we’ve interrupted so many people ourselves proves they’re not very good hiding spots, not for someone aiming to be uninterrupted.”

“Yes, well everyone we’ve caught has been more discreet than us,” he went on, smoothing her hair behind her ears, languidly, tenderly clearing her face for his approach. “Kissing in the restricted section, and under your family Christmas tree, and in front of Montague, and then your flaming dad, for the love of Boggarts.”

She laughed again. She did laugh more when Draco was around. “You weren’t complaining about any of it at the time.”

“And I’m not now,” he said. “I’m merely observing that the only thing that could make our kisses more perfect would be if they lasted longer. They’ve been altogether too short. So...”

She tilted her head, her eyes already closing to receive him. “So?”

“Sorry, Draco. Got caught up at the entrance waiting for -- argh!” It was Ronald, coming into the room babbling excuses but not looking away from Pansy at his side until she elbowed him in the ribs at the sight of Draco standing in the centre of the room, millimetres away from snogging Hermione Granger.

Hermione’s head jerked back and Draco’s arms fell from around her waist. “Parkinson?” she said, gawking at Ronald’s hand clamped around Pansy’s. “What are you playing at?”

Pansy held Ronald’s hand in both of hers. “Consider me asking you two the same thing, Granger.”

“I should think it’s obvious,” Hermione countered.

Pansy huffed. “Yes, actually. It has been for some time. But that answer is hardly satisfying.” She curved her mouth into a greedy smile. “Draco, spill it.”

\----------------------------------------

The little owl looked half frozen to death by the time someone noticed Pigwidgeon fluttering around the windows of the Malfoy Manor kitchen. He stood on the hearth over the scullery fire, preening the ice out of his feathers as an elf carried away a message for the Master and Mistress of the house.

The elves had learned to avoid the Lestranges, so instead of seeking out Lucius in the drawing room, they found Narcissa, upstairs in her bedroom, squinting out at the driving snow.

Though she’d been expecting this message, she frowned all the same. News that Bellatrix was at large was all over the papers now. Of course, the Weasleys wanted some assurance that Ronald was being kept clear of her. In her message, Molly didn’t quite accuse the Malfoys of harbouring fugitives, but she did express concern for the “unpredictable” nature of their family situation now the Lestranges were unaccounted for.

Narcissa took a deep breath and fought to keep her temper. She needed to be careful, to assure Molly Weasley that Ronald knew who Bellatrix was and the danger she might pose for him, and that he would stay in school until the Aurors rounded her back up.

“Darling, no,” Lucius said when he came up to bed and saw Molly’s note. “Don’t reply in writing. Too easily it becomes evidence, should anything go awry. The return address -- they’ve left London and are back at their hovel. I’ll pay a visit.”

“No, I will go,” Narcissa said. “You know Arthur prefers that it’s me. Frankly, so do I.”

Lucius came close as she summoned a traveling cloak. “He closed his arms around her waist and dropped his chin to her crown. “I am eternally, utterly sorry, Narcissa darling.”

She pulled on her gloves as if he wasn’t holding her. “Sorry isn’t the right word. To be sorry is too near regretting our relation to the Weasleys. And since the moment I laid eyes on Ronald, I haven’t been able to regret him or anything connected to him.”

Lucius sighed, continuing to hold her even though she was reaching for her wand to leave. “As much as we adore him, darling,” he said, “Ronald owes his existence to Arthur Weasley.”

She scoffed. “Yes, he is either Arthur’s son, a monster conceived under the influence of a love potion who cannot love, or else my husband is at least a little in love with another woman.”

“Cissa, it’s not that simple.”

“Of course it’s not,” she said, finally tilting her head to look at him.

He held her gaze for as long as he could. At times like these, there was a knowing coldness about her. Of course, Lucius knew paternity potions existed. But he had always had it in his mind that, without Molly and Arthur’s permission, he would never use one on Ronald. And Molly had very recently pledged to him that she would not use one for Ronald’s own safety, not with the dangerous Legilimens who was the Dark Lord loose in the country again. 

But the matter was never discussed between Lucius and Narcissa. They only spoke of it obliquely, with these kinds of barbs and insinuations. 

At any time during the fourteen years Ronald had been in their care, Narcissa could have brewed a potion and used it on her son herself. Lucius could not ask her directly if she knew who Ronald’s biological father was, but that did not mean she did not know.

\----------------------------------------------

In the vanished room, Hermione and Pansy stood in matched stances, feet apart, arms crossed, chins lifted, like queens on either end of a chess board.

Hermione looked at each of the boys in turn. “You both knew about this, didn’t you? Why are you acting shocked, Ronald?”

He sputtered. “Because I am. Last thing you told me was you and Draco weren’t together, and now here he is about to gnaw your face off.”

Hermione scoffed. “Poetry.”

“Oh, honestly,” Pansy said. “There’s no need for the two of you to row like a bad marriage anymore.” Pansy clamped her fingers on either side of Ronald’s jaw and tipped his head downward. “Stop looking at her like that.”

Draco shuddered. “You get used to it.”

“No, I don’t,” Pansy said.

“Oh, don’t worry on my account,” Hermione said. “Ronald is all yours, Parkinson. Even though a week before Christmas he was asking me to make sure I troubled myself to consider him as part of my future. Bloody F-boy -- “

“And then you spent the holidays making eyes at my brother, right in front of me,” Ronald burst. “And that was after Pansy sprung an ultimatum on me on the road to Hogsmeade. It was all very confusing, okay? But we’re all sorted now. Right? Draco? Tell them it’s alright. Nothing to be confused about.”

Draco heaved an enormous sigh. “Actually, it’s going to be plenty confusing for a while longer.”

Hermione raised both her eyebrows, her vision flicking between the brothers again. “How is that? What have the pair of you done?”

“Think, Ronald,” Draco said. “The night we got back to school, when Mother demanded to know which of us fancied Granger, and we knew they’d go completely spare if I admitted it was me…”

Ronald’s face blanched. “So I told them it was me. I didn’t even think. I just took the bullet.”

“More poetry,” Hermione sneered.

“It gets worse,” Draco added. “Snape was standing right there when he said it. And if he figures out we tried to fool Mother, Snape will have no qualms about trotting off to tell her everything. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for her. It’s rather unsettling, frankly.”

“Right. No need to panic. Snape can’t know about us,” Hermione said. “That’s fine. I’d been worrying about how to tell Harry anyway, and could use a little privacy. Maybe it’s for the best.”

“No, Granger, it absolutely is not for the best,” Draco said. “This isn’t just a matter of you seeing me secretly. It’s a matter of you pretending to date Ronald openly.”

“Oh stars, no,” Pansy said. “No, absolutely not. I appreciate sneakiness as much as the next Slytherin, but I will not have this.”

“I’m so sorry, Pansy love,” Ronald said.

“Well, you needn’t be,” she said, spinning away from Ronald as he reached for her. “Because you’re not going along with it.”

The other three were all talking to her at once, pleading, bossing, and cajoling.

“Alright,” she called over them. “I am not unreasonable and I can imagine an arrangement I can tolerate. This is it,” she said, lowering her chin and glaring at Hermione. “And you are not going to like it.”

“Try me,” Hermione replied. “You’ll find I’m perfectly able to put my personal feelings aside for the sake of the greater good.”

“How noble,” Pansy sneered. “Then you won’t be bothered at all if, while you’re fake-dating my Ronald, I unexpectedly fake-reconcile with my first love, Draco Malfoy.”

“What?” the brothers said in unison.

“Yes, that’s right,” Pansy grinned, still addressing Hermione. “It’ll ensure nothing ever gets out of hand. You won’t do anything to Ronald that you wouldn’t mind seeing immediately mirrored between Draco and me. Because that’s what will happen, Granger.”

Hermione let out a single, joyless laugh. “You think I’m keen to maul Ronald? Right under Harry’s nose and all?”

Pansy shrugged. “I have no idea what you could bring yourself to do for the -- what did you call it -- the greater good. So I’d like a little insurance. And if you never overstep with Ronald, I’ll never do the same with Draco. Over the years, I’ve already ranged over most of him. Lovely terrain that can only have improved with age. I wouldn’t even have to be shy.”

Ronald was sputtering again. “Now wait just a minute -- “

“I’m only threatening them, Ron,” she said, looping her arms around his waist and nestling her face against his chest.

He still wasn’t used to her treating him like this and fell speechless, draping his arm across her back and fighting back a facial expression that could only be described as goofy.

“Do we have an arrangement, Granger?” Pansy asked from where she stood embracing Ronald.

Over her shoulder, Hermione looked to Draco. He answered with a shrug. “It’s either this or my parents send me off to school in Bulgaria.”

Hermione struck a pout. “Seriously? But your mother was so nice at my house -- ”

“That was vapid good manners. And my father is of a completely different mind when it comes to my prospects in Bulgaria, Granger. Don’t test them.”

“Fine, we have a deal, Parkinson,” Hermione said. “By the stars, Ronald, what are we going to tell Harry?”

“Should I go get him right now?” Ronald smirked. “Maybe if we’re lucky he can bring Cho Chang into all of this. Stars know it’s not complicated enough.”

“Speaking of complicated,” Draco said, “Hermione finished the potion.”

Ronald jumped. “Oh. Right.”

“But you seem to be dealing with a lot right now,” Hermione rushed to say. “Emotionally, I mean. Maybe we should wait to use the potion until -- well, until we’ve all had some time to settle in.”

“I agree with Mother Granger this time,” Draco said. “There’s no rush to use the potion. It won’t expire for years.”

Pansy relinquished her hold on Ronald. “It’s me. Whatever you’re all up to, those two don’t think you should do it in front of me.”

Draco tutted. “Now Pansy, that’s not -- “

“No, she’s the perfect person to have here for it,” Ronald interrupted. “The whole idea that Molly Weasley might have had a love potion accident with someone other than her own exhausted husband came from Pansy in the first place. And if the potion does turn anything but Weasley red -- well then, we can test whether Molly had any affection for her other man by whether I sense any affection when I -- when I’m with Pansy.” He took both her hands. “You don’t mind, do you? If the first time I kiss you, for real, it’s part experiment?”

Draco was interrupting before she could answer. “It’s going to be red. It’s just a matter of getting it over with. This whole thing is ridiculous.”

“Look at how emotional you both are. I say we wait,” Hermione called over Draco’s already raised voice. “In fact, you don’t even have to be in the room while we activate it, Ronald. Just leave me a strand of your hair -- “

“Oh no,” Ronald said, both his hands raised in protest. “That’s how we’ll end up with one of Crookshanks’s ginger hairs in the potion instead of mine, and me running off into the night convinced I was sired by a cat -- ”

“Or a kneazle.”

“See, she doesn’t even argue it couldn’t happen. Bet you’d love to hear why, Draco -- “

“Ronald, don’t you dare -- “

“What? Don’t dare what?” Draco demanded.

Ronald and Hermione both fell silent, too cross to even look at each other.

“Oh, for star’s sake,” Pansy said, holding her own forehead.

After a moment, Hermione took a breath so deep all four of them heard it. “Fine, Ronald. Whenever you want. You want to activate the potion now? We can do it now.”

He let out a breath himself. “Thank you for your kind support. What comes next?”

Draco had set three beakers on the tabletop but as he glanced at Pansy, he got one more out of his satchel. Next to them, he had set a list he had copied from a book from the restricted section. The four of them gathered around the table as Draco clapped his hands once and began. 

“This is our paternity potion. In its un-reacted state, it is, as you can see, this lovely not-at-all-muddy brown colour. It is, however, infused with reagents that magically identify the presence of genetic material from twenty-eight British wizarding families.”

He turned to look somewhat apologetically at Hermione. “May I do a demonstration with a strand of your hair?”

She nodded and pulled hard at the crown of her head. She held a long, dark, spiral hair up to the light before dropping it into the potion. There was no change. Draco swirled the beaker so the potion spun in a vortex around her disembodied hair. All the while, it kept its brown colour.

“As expected,” he said. “Neither Hermione’s mother nor her father are from the assortment of families the potion recognizes.”

Draco looked up from the un-reactive potion. “Pansy? If you please.”

“Oh,” she said, slightly startled to be called upon. “Certainly.”

She dropped a straight, dark strand into the next beaker. As soon as it touched the potion, a yellow web shot through the brown, hanging suspended in the solution. Draco turned to the list. “Buttercup yellow. So your mother is an Abbott?”

Pansy smiled rather wanly. “Yes.”

Ronald grinned. “Abbott -- aren’t they all Hufflepuffs?”

“Shut it, Ronald,” she said, tugging on his arm.

Draco took the glass and swirled it. The yellow web stayed visible, while around it, the rest of the potion turned a light green, like new shoots poking through the earth. He let his breath out. “Spring green for Parkinson. It works.”

Just then Hermione began breathing normally again too, but she replied with a confident, “Of course it does.”

“One last test before we begin,” Draco said. He plucked a shiny hair from his own head to add to the third beaker. A black web sprung up on contact. 

“You don’t have to tell us that’s for Mum,” Ronald said. “Black for the house of Black.”

Draco nodded as he swirled the glass. The potion turned an opaque silver, like mercury. “And this colour is for Malfoy,” he said. “Exactly as described on the list.”

They all leaned back from where they’d been hunched together over the table. One un-reacted beaker remained. 

Draco dropped a hand on Ronald’s shoulder. “You still don’t have to do it. Not tonight and not ever. We can pour the rest of the potion into the lake and forget about the whole thing if you like.”

Ronald looked at his feet. He swayed slightly, until the sway became a nod, growing in determination. “No, we’ve come this far.” He raised his hands to his hairline and pulled. “I’ll do it myself.”

He held the ginger hair over the surface of the potion. “You don’t have to look, Draco.”

Draco swallowed. “I do.”

Ronald let the hair sink into the potion. As it had for Draco and Pansy’s tests, a web of colour appeared. “Dark purple, like a plum,” Ronald announced.

“Yes,” Draco said. “That’s Prewett. That’s Molly.”

Ronald stood over the brown potion with the purple web. His three companions watched as his throat bobbed. To find out his biological father’s family, all he needed to do was to reach out and swirl the glass. 

“You don’t have to,” Hermione whispered into their waiting silence.

“But I will.” Ronald grasped the glass. The brown fluid spun through the deep purple web, and as it did, it flashed, and lightened to silver.


	21. Twenty-one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see previous notes about borrowing Delancey654's paternity potion from "The Ginger Malfoy."

Early Autumn 1979

Severus Snape was not quite twenty years old, alone, at war, and tense. For the moment, he was also too exhausted for vigilance, slumped in a chair in the parlor of his ratty house on Spinner's End, his wand still in the slack grip of his right hand, the neck of a liquor bottle in his left.

At the sound of knocking at his front door, he jolted awake, already snarling. There had been Ministry raids and arrests all week. The Dark Lord's powers were still strong, advancing, but bloody Dolohov had gone too far with the execution of the Prewett brothers, and the Ministry was finally forced to act. Word was that Aurors had taken Lucius Malfoy for questioning two days earlier, and he hadn't been seen since.

A knock at this early hour, in this dirty, remote place, could mean one of two things: either the Aurors had come for him, or else she had.

Snape shuffled to the hall. With a flick of his wand the door became transparent from his side, revealing her standing in the grey dawn light. He straightened his posture, smoothed his hair, and opened the door as little possible before pulling Narcissa Black Malfoy inside by her wrist. The move was perfectly calibrated, dramatic but precise enough to miss closing the swirling skirts of her robes in the door.

She pressed herself against the wall of the narrow vestibule, catching her breath as he let go of her. Narcissa was Snape's former classmate, housemate, a married woman now, but only nineteen years old herself, mired deep in the war thanks to her husband, six years older.

Severus leaned in close, looming over her as he asked in a low, calm voice, "Is there word of him?"

Without speaking, she shook her head. She couldn't seem to resolve her breathlessness, as if she wasn't merely tired, but terrified. And then finally, "No. Not a word from Lucius since they took him. It's awful, unbearable. So I've come to ask what you know."

"Nothing." He stood back, pausing to give her a chance to plead with him to tell her what they should do next. When she didn't ask, he nodded anyway. "Come through. I'll bring you some tea."

She waited for him in the room where he'd been sleeping. Every painting generations of his father's family had hung in this room had been pulled down and replaced with books Snape had already read, and shelves awaiting books he would read someday. It was nothing so dazzling as the collection in the manor - especially after Narcissa's dowry of books from the Black family library had been added - but it was far more than a promising start for a young potioneer who hadn't inherited a single book. It said something of the disordered state she was in when Narcissa hardly noticed.

Her teacup rattled on its saucer as she took it from him and brought it to her knee.

"Nerves, Cissa?" he taunted almost jovially. "Whatever it is, you needn't be nervous. Ask your favour. That is why you've come here, of course. That is always why."

Her eyes had been focused on the teacup, but now she looked hard at Snape's face. "And do you despise me for it? Are you disappointed that since my father died there have only been two men in this world I could trust? One who has betrayed me anyway, and the other who is you."

He let a silence frame his reply, not returning her look, taking a moment to fold his hands on the back of the chair as he stood behind it. Yes, he was moved by her attachment to him, by the ardor with which she spoke to him of trust. Yet, he was unable to keep from sheltering himself from it. "What betrayal?" was all he said in reply.

"Promise to help and I'll confide in you."

"Cissa," he said. Shortened, her name was little more than a breath. "Of course I will help. If I can."

She set her tea untasted on the table in front of herself. She squared her shoulders, cleared her throat, and said, "Sleep with me. Now."

Snape spun in a circle where he stood, his lip curled into a sneer. "What madness?"

Narcissa could not stay seated. She was on her feet, pacing alongside the cold hearth. "Lucius's arrest is not the only tragic news I've had this week," she began. "I have also learned that Molly Weasley is pregnant."

Snape scoffed. "That is hardly news. The woman is pregnant more often than she is not. Five children in six years. I hardly see how - "

"The child's father may be Lucius," she blurted. She had never said it aloud. The sensation was somehow as satisfying as it was devastating. While the wound was open, she explained the rest - about Lucius's well-meant visit to pay his respects at the Prewett cemetery, and its unfortunate timing with the Milletus bloom.

Snape watched silently as Narcissa ranted and paced, keeping her tears away with her anger. "The unfairness of it, Severus. One cursed encounter with Molly Weasley and Lucius may have a viable heir. Two years of marriage to me and all Lucius has are two lost pregnancies. Nothing more."

"Cissa, that is not - "

She wouldn't let him interrupt. "And now, if the Ministry can prove he had any involvement with the Prewett brothers, they'll have to make a public show of punishing him. And I will have lost my chance to be mother to a Malfoy heir."

Snape was not one to be touched by traditional family ideals like passing on property and names, and avoiding dying alone. "For your wayward husband, you have my shock and my sympathy," he said, taking his seat with a flip of his robes. "With or without exposure to a love potion pollen, if I recall, the Weasley woman and Lucius shared a mutual admiration in school. Something about watching the stars. So the child shouldn't be damaged by the Milletus effect."

Narcissa was snarling now. "Yes, it seems everyone knew about their history of astronomy tutoring except for me. Even Arthur Weasley."

"But," Snape went on, one finger raised to slow the rush of her fury and frustration, "as much as I care for you, Cissa, and as profoundly as you have been wronged, my sympathy is not enough to move me to hazard tossing myself into this infernal mix. Your sisters live and while they do, you need not be without family, if that is what you want."

Narcissa stopped pacing, her delicate mouth curving into a sneer of its own. "Is that all, Severus? I believed you more clever than this." She approached his chair, her eyes and mouth set dark and determined. Her look sparked in his abdomen, and he wondered for a moment at his refusal of her.

"Think of it, Severus," she said, stepping closer. "Without my own child to make a claim, the Malfoy estate will pass to Molly Weasley's child. And as it does, it will pass out of our influence to that of the Order of the Phoenix. They would then have control of both Hogwarts and the manor, two of the most ancient and enchanted edifices in Britain. It would be a tremendous boon to them, a perceptible shift in power."

Snape frowned. She was right. The Order was currently starved for resources, its members scattered and hiding. A tangled web of Fidelius charms was the only thing preserving them, and even that was beginning to fray. The Dark Lord was powerful. Malfoy Manor was a vital seat of that power, and it must remain ever his.

"It is not impossible," Narcissa went on, "that Molly Prewett's child is indeed her husband's, a Weasley with no claim to inherit from Lucius. And it is also not impossible that I am carrying my own legitimate Malfoy heir at this moment. The timing of my cycle is irregular. While it's still too soon to detect a pregnancy, it may be true. As we speak, I cannot be sure of any of these things. And in the event that Molly's child is an heir while I have none - well, I need another chance. Any child born to me during my marriage to Lucius will suffice. Even if such a child can't control the manor, at least the house will not fall into other hands. I need this child, whether they're born of Lucius Malfoy's own blood or - " She paused, extending two slender, white fingers to tip Snape's chin, to bring his line of sight level with hers. "Or yours," she finished.

She dropped her fingers, watching as Snape clenched his jaw. He squeezed his eyes shut, pinched the bridge of his nose, and rose to stand in front of her. He spoke with a clipped decisiveness he did not feel. "You are not merely looking to serve our Lord. You are looking for revenge, for comfort - "

She leaned toward him, hissing up into his face. "Why shouldn't I have all of that?"

He moved his feet, meaning to step away but coming closer instead. Young and scared, hurt and so eerily lovely - Narcissa - another flower-named witch he didn't dare touch. "Not me. Find a good man to do it," he said.

She was on tiptoe, whispering to him. "A good man would not do it."

His voice dropped as well. "Find a better man, at least. It shouldn't be difficult. Not when you're - so very - "

While he'd been watching her face, he hadn't seen her hands rising. He jumped, a ragged breath rushing out of him at the touch of her fingers fiddling with the row of black buttons curving over his chest.

"You haven't been listening," she said. "I trust only you. I want this only from you. Severus, please. Don't make me - "

Her words became a gasp as he gathered her up, her knees in the crook of his arm. Her arms were around his neck, her forehead pressed to the lump in his throat, his closed mouth smoothing the fine hair at the crown of her head as he carried Madam Malfoy upstairs.

________________________________

Much Later

Draco was the son of Lucius Malfoy. Anyone could tell at a glance. His mother knew it. All of his professors knew it.

When Narcissa Malfoy visited Spinner's End, just days after Ann Granger gave birth to a daughter, months into Molly Weasley's pregnancy, and shortly before Lily Potter would fall pregnant with her son, she and Lucius had already conceived Draco. Lucius was released from Auror custody late the same day Narcissa returned from Spinner's End. He found her in bed, where she'd drifted off to sleep after a long bath. For the first time in months, he felt forgiven, and understood it was best not to ask why.

All of it meant that conjuring quicksilver in Draco's portion of a paternity potion had been a demonstration, a formality, not a moment of truth. No one had been thinking of him when Ronald dropped a strand of ginger hair into the potion and watched the liquid turn silver.

At the sight of the transformation, Pansy's breath hitched. Hermione's hands covered her mouth.

Maybe it was in disbelief that Ronald swirled the glass in the opposite direction, slowly and then quickly. Still the silver colour, the Malfoy family colour, gleamed through the glass. He didn't speak a word, didn't look up from the flask, from the purple web shot through the liquid silver - not Prewett and Weasley, Prewett and Malfoy. All this time, he had been a literal Malfoy.

Draco was first to move. From the tabletop, he lifted his own glass, came to Ronald and raised his silver solution, holding both flasks side by side.

At the clinking of the glass, Ronald looked up from the silver potion to the glittering grey of Draco's eyes. They stood motionless as if seeing one another clearly for the first time. Ronald's lip quavered. "You're my brother."

Draco's face broke into a smile. "From the very beginning."

There was a thud and rustling of robes as the boys hurled themselves into an embrace. They stood together, faces buried in each other's shoulders, not speaking but laughing quietly, striking each other on the back.

There was much that would be difficult, unpleasant about the revelation of Ronald's true paternity. But for the moment, they held each other in what was best about it, their brotherhood. Ever since they'd met as toddlers, neither of them had held back any closeness or affection, even when they believed they weren't related by blood. It hadn't mattered. But this new knowledge, though it changed nothing between them, it did mean something - something good.

They stood back, Ronald's eyes rimmed red. He looked to the girls, standing by holding each other by the sleeve. His expression, already wide-open and full of feeling, softened even further as he looked at Pansy.

Hermione was packing the potion away, corking the glasses and bottle. She took Draco's hand and led him out of the vanished room, leaving Ronald and Pansy alone.

In the corridor outside, Draco slumped against the wall. Hermione stood in front of him, keeping his hand in hers, still not accustomed to holding it. They were in a quiet, empty section of the castle, so she leaned into his chest, their joined hands folded on the front of his robes where she could look at them, watching herself touching him. She had missed him terribly since his mother sent him back to school. But she wouldn't mention it now.

His face drooped over her head, his breath in her hair. "Ronald is my blood," he said. "But my father cheated on my mother."

"I'm so sorry," she said, dropping kisses between his knuckles. "Ronald reckons it was a love potion accident. That makes it far more excusable than a true affair, doesn't it?"

Draco clamped his free hand around her shoulders, and held her more tightly against himself. "Yes, but even if he's right about love potions - you saw Ronald in there. He's not suffering from ante-natal love potion damage. He is capable of love. All kinds of love - for our mother, me, for those twins, you and Potter, for our slut father - "

Hermione shushed him, letting go of his hand to hold his face between her palms. "You love your father too," she said.

He sighed, bowing to rest his forehead on hers. "I do. But Ronald's perfectly good heart means that even if it was an accident there was something - there. Something between Dad and Mrs. Weasley." Draco shuddered around her.

She traced his jaw with her fingertip. He leaned toward her touch, sighing, his voice soft and still slightly pained.

"You know your parents," she said. "And I know the Weasleys. Whatever happened, all those couples stayed married. More than that, they stayed in love, in spite of everything. That must make sense, we just don't know how."

"I need to speak to them," Draco said. "My parents - I wish that, just for a night, I could go home. It's been so long. And now it's too dangerous."

In the dark corridor, she blinked her brown eyes at him. There was nothing else she could do or say, so she told him again. "I'm sorry, Malfoy."

He smirked. "You're the last person with anything to be sorry for. You can't take me home, but at least you brought me to your home when I had nowhere to go."

She scoffed. "You make it sound like I did something unselfish. And like it wasn't actually rough living for you, staying in a non-magical house with non-magical people."

"It was an education," he said. "And worth it."

She grinned. "Would you come back? Back to do our washing up, and the laundry, sleeping in our guest room?"

"Guest room, or in some zippered bag on the floor of the front room, or best of all, in your bedroom between those sheets with the little purple rabbits on them, everything smelling like your shampoo." He had bent low enough to be speaking against her neck, the movement of his mouth sending her shivering, clinging to him as she tipped off balance. His voice rumbled, low and hot. "Only let's leave Ronald out of it next time around. Just you and me snuggled in the rabbit sheets."

She veered away to keep from squealing. "Draco Malfoy, you would take advantage of my parents' trust and hospitality to snog me in my childhood bed?"

"For starters," he breathed, pulling back to see her look of wide-eyed affection and a little lingering disbelief. "Now can we please get back to where we were before Ronald last came in? You'll recall we were about to pass some time like a proper, secret couple."

"Wait," she said into his mouth right before it would have connected with her. His lips hadn't touched hers since they were in London, and she knew that once they did, her capacity to have a serious conversation with him would be temporarily suspended. "Malfoy, if you can say we're a proper, secret couple, then I suppose I must be your - well, I guess you'd have to call me - I mean, it wouldn't be wrong to say - "

"Girlfriend, Granger," Draco said. "Yes, you are my best and only girl."

One of her sweet little sounds escaped her as he said it. It bubbled over into a giggle that made her scorn herself. "Listen to me. I sound ridiculously silly," she said.

"Silly?" he said, ducking to get her to look at him in spite of her embarrassment. "Come on, Granger. Accept that you're my girlfriend, whether we can tell anyone else or not. I've lost count of how many kisses it's been, but whatever it is, say it's enough. Say yes and then let me kiss you as if you belong to me, not like you're something I'm stealing."

Hermione was recovering herself, no longer giggling, her hands on either side of his head, slowing him down as he moved toward her again. "And what about you?" she said. "I suppose you have to belong to me now."

"Oh, I am yours," he said, their lips in contact, slowly, gently brushing against each other. "I am nothing if not yours."

She tugged his upper lip between hers, felt the full, warm bow of it along the wet inner edge of her own. He followed with the rest of his mouth, enfolding and embracing hers. She was greedy and wanted to hear him tell her one more time that she was his girl. But whenever she began to back away, he chased after her, not telling her she was his, but making her more and more his.

They kissed as if Ronald and Pansy would never come through the door and back into the corridor, as if no one would ever find them, like no one could ever intrude. Was this what all the other couples felt like - the ones they interrupted kissing as they patrolled the quiet places of the castle? It had to be. It couldn't be.

They had slouched down the wall and were now sitting on the floor, Draco cross-legged as Hermione sat across his thighs, as if side-saddle, her torso twisted slightly to bring her face to his. He was slowly learning the shape of her, his hands dragging over the curve of her spine, the hollow of her waist, the rise of her shoulders. Her robe bunched and buckled beneath his palms but he didn't dare slip his hands inside it. There would be time for that later, and with her sitting so close, he had to be careful. He wanted to be careful, because he wanted this so very much.

Sitting together in the dark corridor, everything was small enough, close enough that it felt perfect. It wasn't. Everything was complicated, political, dangerous, but for the moment they were safe here, together.

____________________________________

A grey corpse-like hand slid along the length of the lintel over the entrance to Malfoy Manor. "Ah, this house," a voice hissed. "I have such great appreciation for it. Each time I return, I expect it to greet me like an old friend. And each time, it shuts itself to me, like this." The hand rakes long fingernails across the doors' wooden face, marring and marking it.

"Inexcusable, Master. Inexcusable. Shall I knock?"

"Yes, Wormtail. Knock."

Peter Pettigrew clanged the massive silver knocker against the door. From behind the scarred wood, a shriek sounded. It might have been in fear, it might have been in delight. Pettigrew drew his wand, making as if to mount a defense against whatever was coming, all the while scanning over his shoulders for an escape route.

The door was flung open by Bellatrix Lestrange. She did not flinch as an enormous viper slithered over her feet and into the house. Instead, she closed her eyes, swaying as if being lovingly caressed.

"My Lord," she said, "at last, you have arrived."

Lucius and Narcissa appeared over her shoulder, bowing as they received their guest.

Voldemort shouldered past Bellatrix without a word. "Lucius," he called, his voice echoing up and down the grand staircase in the entrance hall. "Lovely as always, the Malfoys, the manor. But where is the rest of the family? Where," he said, his mouth all but watering, "are our boys?"

_______________________________

While Hermione Granger and her newly declared boyfriend snogged in the corridor outside, Ronald Malfoy stood in the vanished room, his eyes fixed on Pansy Parkinson's Mary-Jane shoes. They were shiny black, adorable, and stepping toward him.

"You don't have to," he said, stumbling slightly backward. "I mean it, Pansy. This whole prenatal potion damage issue is my problem. If you want, I'll sort it out with Molly herself. You don't owe me anything."

She huffed. "You'll waltz into the Weasleys' place, have a cup of tea, and with poor old Arthur sitting there, ask them if Molly was at all in love with Lucius Malfoy when he got her pregnant? Is that what you'll do, Ronald?"

He sighed and pulled at his own hair.

Pansy stomped to the table and slammed her hand on its top. "Come over here and sit down, like you know you're supposed to when you're alone in this room with me."

"I won't force you to - "

"Ronald, sit down."

He scuffed his way across the room and sat on the table, his head hanging miserably between his shoulders.

"You know what comes next. We'll start at the beginning. Look at me, from a distance," Pansy said.

He raised his head, found her face across the metre between them, offered her a wan smile.

"That's it. Look," she began, stepping into the empty space. "The very fact that you are concerned about taking advantage of me, after all you've been through tonight, all you're still worrying about, proves that you are indeed connected to me, through feelings beyond physical ones."

He shrugged a weak laugh, but kept looking at her, as they had practiced, and perhaps a little less sadly than a moment before. He said, "It's as simple as that is it?"

"Maybe," she said, coming to a stop, standing between his knees.

Her face was close to his. He could smell his own scent on her from when he'd been nuzzling her neck outside. As he recognized it, his heart thudded and his cheeks flushed pink.

She saw it and smiled. "Clearly, you are not incapable of compassion for me, Ronald. You want my happiness even if it means sacrificing a little bit of your own."

"But that's just being decent. I'm like that with all my friends," he said.

She found his hands, her fingers gliding between his, thousands of nerve endings sparking and vibrating between them. This was not an act of friendship. Her eyelids drifted downwards as his skin touched hers. She did nothing to hide her reaction, letting him watch.

While she was speechless, he spoke, his voice finding the seductive quality it usually had when they were close like this. "Alright, maybe not all my friends," he said. "Well, if that's it, if you're sure, then maybe we can go on our way without - "

"No," Pansy said, rolling her lips inwards and then out, wet and deeply pink. "Don't you dare go without."

Ronald descended on her, his mouth open enough to catch hers, fitting into her with the practiced prowess so many girls at school already knew, but with an emotional intensity rooted not in a desire to please himself but in a desire for her, for everything she wanted.

With their fingers still laced together, he pressed their hands into the small of her back, pulling her against him. For a moment, she stayed that way, savouring the return of his strength and confidence. She stood as close to him as he could get her from where he sat, her hands behind her back, her chest pressed against his. This magnetic intensity was what drew her to him in the first place, but it wasn't what kept her here now. That was his tenderness. She tugged on her hands and he released her, her fingers now free to hold his face, and work it against hers.

The kiss deepened, Ronald's hands moving up her back to the nape of Pansy's neck, beneath the edge of her silky bob. The tapered base of her head fit into the V between his thumb and forefinger. How could something as simple as an angle of hers clicking perfectly into his hand feel so intimate, so perfectly connected?

Light seemed to rush through Ronald Malfoy. He couldn't see it, but he could feel it coursing from his heart into the rest of him. He was not damaged. He was whole and well and every bit as mad for the girl in his arms as he ought to have been.

"Ronald, I'm sorry - "

He broke away from Pansy, growling, "What is it, Hermione?"

"Sorry," she said again, blushing. Draco had been wise to wait outside. "You might not have noticed, but the galleons are burning. It's Harry, I'm afraid. He says it's urgent."

Ronald swore. "Oh he does, does he?"

Pansy had tucked her face into the front of his robes, snickering against his chest. "It's alright," she said. "You must be satisfied - "

"I am not - "

Hermione coughed. "I'll be outside."

As she left, Ronald groaned and took Pansy's face in both his hands. He kissed her firmly on the mouth. "Sorry they're like this. If you're going to be staying around, it's probably best you get used to it, honestly."

She brushed his hair from his forehead. "I am staying around," she said. "But don't leave until you tell me if you - found what you were looking for."

He grinned at her, coming nose-to-nose again. "Yes, Pansy love," he said. "Everything I was looking for is here."


	22. Twenty-two

Hermione and Ronald tumbled through the portrait hole into the Gryffindor common room. They had run all the way from the vanished room where they’d left their Slytherins, rushing to answer Harry’s urgent message on their galleons. He didn’t seem to be in trouble though, sitting on a sofa in front of the fire tossing a snitch. Hermione fell heavily into the cushions beside him while Ronald sunk to the rug between their feet.

“There you both are,” Harry said, pocketing the snitch. “Right. Tell me everything you know about Occlumency.”

Hermione groaned. “That’s your emergency? You’re too lazy to go to the library to look up Occlumency yourself?”

“No, I don’t need that kind of information,” Harry said. “It’s personal. Dumbledore says I have to learn it.“

“To stop you having those dreams,” Hermione finished, nodding. “Very wise, of course.”

“Well, sure,” Harry allowed. “But he says I have to learn it from Snape. Tonks says he’s the best teacher we have but,” he paused, leaning in to whisper to them. “But Snuffles hates the idea. Like, really hates it. We were talking about it in headquarters and it turned into this big, scary shouting match between him and Snape, name-calling and wands drawn and everything. I jumped in between them, but who knows what might have happened if the Weasleys hadn’t all come in.” 

Hermione looked concerned now, but Ronald was still annoyed at not being with Pansy at this moment. “Yeah, that’s alarming and all,” he said, “but did you really have to call us back here in a great flaming hurry to have a rant about Snape? Come on, Harry.”

”Look, there must be a good reason Snuffles is wary of Snape coming at me to read my mind. He doesn’t trust Snape -- “

“Harry, he doesn’t trust Snape to be nice to you. He does trust him not to turn you over to You-know-who,” Hermione insisted. “There’s a big difference.”

“So I just lay back and let Snape have free rein to read my thoughts, do I? There must be some way to keep him out,” Harry said.

“There is,” Hermione answered. “Learn Occulmency.”

Ronald snickered but Harry was frustrated. “Not from him,” Harry sulked. “He isn’t trustworthy.”

“But he is, Harry,” Hermione insisted. “Tonks already vouched for him. And what’s more, Dumbledore trusts him. As do Lupin, and Kingsley, Mad-eye, the Weasleys.”

“My other parents trust him too though,” Ronald said.

“See? This is exactly the problem,” Harry raved. “Ronald’s dad’s name came up while they were fighting, actually. Snuffles called Snape Mr. Malfoy’s lap dog.”

Ronald scoffed. “My mother’s, maybe. My father’s, never.” He was frowning, fingering his bottom lip. “In fact, I’ve heard people flattering my mother at her garden parties, saying she’s a gifted Occlumens, the proof being that it was her who taught Severus Snape how to do it so well.”

Hermione nudged him with her foot. “What do you know about Occlumency?”

“Not much,” Ronald said. “Just what it is and that most of the Black family has a natural talent for it. Like Harry and flying, I reckon. Draco’d probably pick it up quick.”

“Good to know,” Hermione muttered to herself.

Ronald narrowed his eyes. “If Snape did learn it from Mum, it must have been before they got me, back in the bad old days when the manor was crawling with Death Eaters, and he used to come around more often.”

Harry scoffed. “So Snape learned Occlumency at Death Eater camp during the war. I wonder what he’s got on your dad, Ronald -- what it is your mum wanted to make sure no one could ever dig up out of Snape’s mind.”

Harry flinched as he said it, as if expecting Ronald to spring to his feet demanding more respect for his parents. But Ronald seemed thoroughly distracted with his rather pink and swollen lip.

Harry rolled his eyes. “You’re hardly listening to me. And it’s clear why. You’ve been off snogging someone new.”

Instead of Ronald, it was Hermione who answered, her tone high and defensive. “No I haven’t.”

Both of the boys turned to her, Harry wide-eyed and looking a little sick. She was smoothing her hair over a dark red bruise she hadn’t yet realized was developing on her neck. 

Harry read the alarm on Ronald’s face. He began to nod. “Oh, I see,” Harry said. “You’ve gone and snogged each other. Had yourselves a happy Christmas together indeed.”

They were both speaking at once, shaking their heads and shushing him.

Harry was speaking over them, his voice both amused and irritated. “Well, I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. But it will take some getting used to. Try to keep the snogging to a minimum around me, if you please.”

“Will you shut it, Harry,” Ronald said. “No one’s snogged anybody here.”

“Well you’ve been kissing someone. I learned to see it in your face ages ago. And just look at Hermione’s neck.” Harry’s last outburst was loud enough for the rest of the room to fall silent, heads lifted to see her better.

She stood up, snarling, her hand on her throat. “Right, Harry Potter. Get up. We need to talk, privately and with the rest of the people involved.” She took a galleon from her pocket, slightly bigger than the one the DA used for communication, and drew a message on it with the tip of her wand. “There,” she said. “We’ll meet them outside the portrait hole. Umbridge won’t give a care if they’re out past curfew.”

\------------------------------------

Before the nightly alarm was set for the door of the common room, Ronald, Hermione, and Harry stepped out into the corridor.

“This is all very dramatic,” Harry said. “Just tell me who's meeting us and let’s be done with it.”

“No, it’s better this way,” she insisted. “Wait until he gets here.”

“It’s your bloke and you’re not proud of him. Then I’m guessing, Vincent Crabbe,” Harry smirked.

Ronald faked a retch.

“I’m plenty proud,” Hermione answered primly. “I just won’t speak of it yet. We need to spend our time out here in private explaining what else we learned over the holidays.”

“If it’s about the Death Eater prison break, I already know,” Harry said, his mirth gone all at once, leaving him sliding down the wall to sit on the floor, his knees pulled up to his face-level. “They’re getting stronger, and bolder. First the attack on Mr. Weasley at the Ministry, and then a breach of Azkaban. I can’t help feeling like -- like we’re wasting time, like we're losing.”

Hermione sat beside him. “Yes, there’s that,” she said. “It’s scary, and I’m sorry. But there’s more. We’re more closely connected to the Death Eater escape than you might think.”

Ronald took it up. “When Bellatrix Lestrange got out of prison, the first move she made was to come looking for Draco and me. Our parents barely got us out of Hermione’s house and back to school safely before she could round us up for You-know-who.”

Harry frowned. “Why did she want you? And why were your parents working against her? I thought Bellatrix and your mum were sisters. I thought they always planned on letting Voldemort have the next generation -- at least Draco, anyways.”

Ronald let out a long breath. “There’s only one thing my parents have always planned on: survival. Their own and that of the Malfoy family line.”

“Which, when you come down to it, has nothing to do with you,” Harry said, meaning it as a compliment, a comfort. “So once Voldemort has Draco as his littlest henchman, he should be satisfied and you should be fine. When the Malfoys come apart, you can stay with the Weasleys, and the Order, and,” he swallowed, “with me.”

Harry was genuinely surprised when Hermione’s temper flared. “It’s as easy as that, is it?” she demanded. “We just sacrifice Ronald’s brother and be done with it? No compassion for him? No regrets?”

“That is not what I said,” Harry protested. “Of course I don’t want Malfoy sacrificed. I’d fly through fire to save any student at this school, even him. All I mean is that, since Draco is the literal heir to the manor and the fortune and the rest of it, he is the one that Voldemort, with his disgusting obsession with bloodlines, cares about.”

Ronald sat down beside Harry, his head in his hands. “Bloodlines,” was all he said.

Harry threw his hands up and let them fall with a slap into his lap. “What is going on?”

Still sitting, Hermione turned to face him. “There’s a potion, and old potion for determining a pure-blood wizard’s paternity. And since Ronald was having -- certain misgivings, we brewed it over the holidays and tested it on him tonight. That’s where we were when you were looking for us.”

Harry’s face blanched. He loved Sirius but he seemed to prefer to relate to Harry as a replacement for James Potter, as a brother, an equal. The Weasleys, on the other hand, they had everything, siblings and parents. They were whole and pure, a true family -- Harry’s family. Whatever Ronald was about to tell him, there was only one answer Harry could accept about Ronald’s paternity. He spoke it himself. “Your bloodline is Weasley, Ronald. I know it. Ginny and the twins are your brothers and sister. Molly is your mum. And…” 

“Arthur,” Ronald finished when Harry’s voice trailed off. “Arthur is not my father. Molly is my mother, and Lucius Malfoy is my father, my father by blood.”

Harry was on his feet, pacing and swearing. “No, you botched the potion,” he said. “You’re rubbish at potions, Ronald. Everyone knows that.”

“I hardly touched it,” he said with a miserable shake of his head. “Draco gathered everything for it and he had Hermione’s help putting it together. She was the one who finished it off. It was nothing like as fussy to make as polyjuice potion, and you know she’s been brewing at that level since second year. It’s not the potion. It’s me, Harry. This is who I am.”

Harry’s grief wasn’t so much for the change in Ronald’s identity, but for what it said about Molly, the woman who loved him like her own son. How she could have... He couldn’t bear it and let loose another volley of swearing. “He forced her. It must have happened during the war, when he was at his worst. He must have...” Even in his anger, Harry couldn't say the word.

Before Ronald could rise to the insult, Hermione dived in. “No, Harry. We have reason to believe it was a love potion accident of some kind. A vital ingredient for a powerful love potion grows on Prewett land. It might have contaminated them during a conversation that should have been harmless.”

“Just ask the twins,” Ronald added. “Them using it in their shop’s potions was what we were brawling about when you stuck your oar in and got yourself banned from quidditch.”

Harry scoffed. “So you’re telling me my best friend is just like Voldemort, born under the influence of a love potion without love, and now incapable of love himself?”

“No, of course not,” Hermione said. “Ronald was worried it might be true, especially with his rather -- erm, spotty history with girls. That’s where his misgivings started.”

“But I’m fine,” Ronald hurried to say. “I’ve got no love potion damage. I proved it to myself, with someone willing to give me lessons on how to relate to girls. Someone, it turns out, I really like.”

Harry stopped pacing. “Someone other than Hermione?”

“Yeah,” Ronald said. “You know her, but -- “

“Pansy’s not coming,” a voice called across the corridor. It was Draco Malfoy, his head just appearing over the landing at the top of the staircase as he stepped into their corridor. “She says coming running at Granger’s beck and call is not part of the arrangement.” He had nearly reached them when he stopped, noticing Harry and sneering at him. “You’re here too now, are you Potter?”

“None of your nonsense tonight, Malfoy,” Harry spat in reply. “It’s not curfew yet, so shove off.”

From his pocket, Draco drew an over-sized galleon and held it up between his thumb and forefinger. He turned a puzzled look to Hermione. “Did you need me or not?”

She sighed as she stepped toward him, her eyes on Harry’s as she threaded her arm through Draco’s and said, “Yes, I did.”

\------------------------------------

Without the casting of a spell, Malfoy manor sensed the urgency in muffling the sound of Narcissa weeping in her bedchamber. None of her foul house guests heard her. No one heard except for her husband.

Lucius sat on the bed. He had come upstairs late on the night the Dark Lord arrived at the manor. His wife was shaking and suffering beneath their downy white blankets and sheets. He lit the lamps and uncovered her, small and pale, fading into the lace of her pillows and her nightdress. Eighteen years of marriage, and she still went to bed every night dressed as a bride. 

He gathered her out of the tangled sheets and held her against his chest, kissing her face and her hair. With one hand he clasped her to him, and with the other he brushed tears from her eyelashes, his voice cooing and shushing.

"Our children," she managed to say through her sobs. "Our beautiful boys, Lucius. They don’t deserve to be tied to a nightmare of a home like this. And we don’t deserve them. We're twisted and awful."

"Hush, darling, you're not awful,” he whispered into her temple. “You are a wonderful mother. It's true that I am unworthy of everything beautiful we have ever had here. But I will fight for it all the same, so that the three of you, my wife and my sons, are not taken from each other."

She only wept harder. "No, I've failed them too. I had to choose between two sisters and I chose the wrong one. Now she's promised my children to a fiend."

Lucius cradled her head against his shoulder. “The children aren’t hers to give.”

“How can we stop her?” Narcissa sniffed against his thin white shirt, the colour of his skin visible where her tears had wet the fabric. “Even if she were to vanish back into darkness tomorrow, all of my mistakes, my sins against this family would still be with us, like a curse, ruining us.”

“Cissa, please,” Lucius said, holding her almost too tightly. “Fate isn’t real. Suffering ends. Truly it was wrong, what happened all those years ago, with you and with me and the others. But you’ve always been so lovely about making the best of those mistakes. Don’t give up hope that we can be happy in spite of them, not after all this time.”

Her tears had renewed themselves. As she cried, she tipped her head away from Lucius’s torso, looking at his face, seeing his tears. She raised her hands to hold his sharp, strong jaw against her palms. “What happened to you with Molly Weasley was an accident, not a terrible choice. There is a vast difference. And its silver lining is that we have Ronald. But what I did -- “

“You did out of intense grief, and desperation, and love for this family.” His tone was fierce, as if he believed what he said. “And don’t say it has no silver lining. Severus knows who Draco’s father is, to be sure, but he sees him as the closest thing to a child of his own he has ever had. There is nothing he wouldn’t do for him, or for you. If we hadn’t had those nine months when we couldn’t know for sure, when Severus had cause to wonder if Draco was his own, he wouldn’t have the attachment he has now -- an attachment we’ve all come to rely on, since I am not husband and father enough to protect either of you -- “

His words vanished into her mouth as she kissed him quiet, her hands in his hair. She broke away, shaking her head against his. “Don’t, Lucius. You are my only husband, Draco’s only father.”

“Maybe so, but I know you depend on Severus. You care for him, as I care for Molly. You have to care for him. I’ve left you no choice,” he said. “It’s what keeps him split between here and the Order, what stops him from flying off like a hero to destroy himself trying to avenge Lily Evans. He watches over the Potter boy but also over you and Draco. The day may come when he has to choose and perhaps we will lose Severus then. But I thank the stars, I thank you, that for now, he protects our boy like his own.”

“No,” she was saying, kissing along the edge of his mouth, down his chin, onto his throat. “No, Lucius. Don’t excuse me. But do love me, even without an excuse.” Her hands were in his shirt, parting it and sliding it over his shoulders, her hands on the bare skin of his back. He lay into the pillows piled behind himself, bringing her closer, bringing them together.

Their family life was difficult, complicated by the lives and politics of other adults who shouldn’t be there. But Lucius and Narcissa always had this -- a connection in their souls and bodies so natural, so powerful, so much more than magical. Everything around them was terrible. There was a demon within their doors. Yet for a moment, they had each other to shut it out. They had the power to momentarily reduce the world to nothing outside themselves.

They lay together afterwards, their breath quiet again. Lucius stretched beneath his wife, her arms slipping into the space the arching of his spine created between the mattress and the small of his back. “I’ll do it, Cissa,” he said as he settled against her. “I promise you. I confirmed this evening that what the Dark Lord wants is the prophecy and Potter. I suspect that if he has those two things, he’ll let our boys alone. And so I will get them for him.”

She perched her chin on his sternum. “How? How will you get Potter from outside Hogwarts?”

“I’ll lure him out,” he said. “He’s keen, but not smart. That nasty elf from your Aunt Walberga Black’s old house, the one who came around moaning during the holidays -- he said something that’s been working in my mind. I think I know how to lure Potter to the Ministry, where the prophecy is kept. He’ll give it to me. And then I’ll bring them both to the Dark Lord. What happens after that is not my affair.”

\-----------------------------

Draco looked down at Hermione’s hand on his arm. “Did you already tell Potter, or is this display of affection you telling him?”

“Telling him?” Harry echoed.

Draco ignored him, still addressing Hermione. “Eager to get the word out, were you Granger?”

She swatted his chest with her free hand. “No, but you left me little choice once you stamped your mark on my neck.”

Draco raised a finger to nudge her hair back from the bruise, snickering to himself. 

“You did it on purpose!” she said.

He smirked. “Of course I did. The Black family has a penchant for marking its belongings. But I didn’t expect you to walk around flaunting it. It can be covered up, you know.”

Harry was swearing again, his hands over his ears. He couldn’t deal with Hermione yet and turned on Ronald. “You knew about this.”

“I was trapped in a little house with them over the holidays. How could I not know about this?” he said.

Harry was sputtering. “Then how could you let it happen?”

“I told them not to, but,” Ronald waved a hand to where Draco was tracing the outline of his love bite on Hermione’s skin with the tip of his finger, “look at them.”

Harry would not look at them. In fact, he squeezed his eyes closed, new horror dawning on him. “So when he came up the stairs just now, making excuses for Pansy Parkinson, you must have been expecting her here because she’s…”

“She’s my girlfriend now, yeah,” Ronald said, unable to keep from grinning. “Look, I don’t know how it happened,” he said, following Harry as he set off down the corridor, snagging his sleeve and keeping him with them. “But I don’t apologize, and I do need you to stay and hear us out.”

“It won’t be that bad,” Hermione was saying, letting go of Draco to approach Harry as Ronald dragged him back. “We have to see each other in secret or else the Malfoys might send Draco off to school in Bulgaria. Because of the holiday visit, they figured out one of their sons was seeing me. Ronald said it was him instead, reckoning they’d be less upset. But Snape heard him say it so we have to keep it up. Please play along, Harry. It won’t be bad. Ronald and I are just going to act like we’re in a sweet, innocent romance.”

“Where he sucks on your neck until it bruises. Right,” Harry huffed. “Why would I go along with this? Why wouldn’t I rat Malfoy out and let Bulgaria have him?”

“Because we need him,” she insisted. “He’s a shield between us and Umbridge, keeping goons like Montague from doing any real damage to us, making it look to the Death Eaters like the Ministry is gaining ground when really they’re just steeling students against them.”

“There’s no such thing as neutral,” Draco said. “Granger’s been trying to bring me ‘round to that for weeks. I accept it. But the best I can do is to work both sides of it, keeping Umbridge satisfied, keeping the rest of the Death Eaters from harassing my parents, and making sure you lot can do what you feel you have to.”

Harry had cringed at the sound of Draco’s voice, leaving Ronald wondering if he’d heard him at all. “If it helps,” Ronald tried, “you could think of Draco as a junior Snape, doing the same kind of thing only on not so grand a scale.”

Harry scoffed. “No, that does not help,” he raved. “This whole horrifying conversation began with me complaining I don’t trust Snape and want nothing more to do with him. And how do you answer that? By bringing me another more chaotic version of Snape?”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Does he know about the potion?” he asked.

Hermione nodded.

“Right,” Draco began. “Listen, Potter. I am not looking for your permission to protect my family. We used to think the Death Eaters would just dismiss Ronald as a Wizengamot glitch. But if Bellatrix is coming hunting for both of us, they must at least suspect that he is a legitimate Malfoy heir they could use to keep the manor under their control. Not to mention keeping our father under their control. I can’t just offer myself in his place anymore. They’re greedy for both of us. I have to help you, so you may as well make the best of it.”

Harry’s posture was slackening, not in relief or understanding, but in exhaustion, disappointment, defeat.

Draco tried one more time. “Ronald is your white knight. And I am your black one.”

Harry shook his head. “I’m finished for tonight. I need some sleep.” With that, he muttered the password and clambered back through the portrait hole.

Hermione and the Malfoy brothers stood looking at the portrait, the fat lady shrugging.

Ronald held out his fist. “Here,” he said, bumping his brother’s hand. “For the chess reference.”

Draco managed a small smile.

“He’ll come around,” Ronald said. “Give him time and space. No one knows better than Harry that there’s no neutral.” With that, Ronald boosted himself back into the portrait hole.

Alone, Hermione threw her arms around Draco’s waist. “Careful,” he said. “The prefects should be patrolling through here soon.”

She clucked her tongue. “That’s rich. YOU telling ME to be careful. Our first proper snog session and you leave me with battle scars.”

“Get yourself a decent healing balm,” he laughed, pushing her hair back to see the mark again. “Someone in your dorm must have some. Ronald probably orders it in bulk.”

‘You’re awful,” she said, even as she nestled her face against his chest. “I didn’t think of a balm. Muggles just wait it out.”

Draco smirked. “They’ve got nothing?”

She considered for a moment. “Well, there’s kissing it better.”

He scoffed. “Does that work?”

“No, it’s just meant as a consolation for being hurt. Makes you feel a little better but does nothing to heal it,” she said.

Draco was bending toward her anyway. “That’s for Muggles. What if a wizard kisses it better? Has anyone ever tested that?”

She leaned away from him, her hand pushing back at his chest. “You leave it alone. You’ve done enough already.”

“Come on, Granger. It’s the scientific method, isn’t it? You love that.”

She sighed as his lips brushed her throat. “I do.”


	23. Twenty-three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey readers, I'm at a crossroads where I need to decide whether to wrap up the story in 2-3 chapters or more like 10. Let me know what you'd prefer in the reviews. Thanks, DDD.

The first day of school after Christmas holidays was very odd for Harry Potter and his best friends. For everyone’s sake, Ronald and Hermione’s fake dating act consisted of little more than making sure Harry didn't sit between them in class, and holding hands when moving through the corridors, all the while taking care not to make any eye contact with anyone anywhere.

Harry scoffed at their pained faces as they made their way, hand in hand, to the potions lab. “I’m not sorry for you,” he said. “You both deserve it.”

At the sight of them, there was some whistling and whispering among the rest of the students in their year, but no one seemed surprised that Ronald Malfoy and Hermione Granger were finally trying it on. It had been almost five years of bickering and flirting, and the memory of their jealous public row at the Yule Ball was fresh enough to make their new status convincing. The idea of the pair of them becoming a couple was easy enough to accept, even if they did look terribly awkward once they were actually together.

Perhaps no one but Ronald and Hermione themselves noticed the way Pansy Parkinson would suddenly warm up to her ex-boyfriend, Draco Malfoy, draping her arm over his shoulder, whispering with her mouth against his ear, her fingers in his hair every time Ronald and Hermione had to touch each other.

“Give it a rest, Pansy,” Draco finally whispered back to her in their last class of the day. “You’re doing such a thorough job, no one’s ever going to believe they fancy each other. Give them a little space.”

She sat back, pouting. “This whole sham is easier for you because he’s your brother. He loves you and you can trust him. Granger has no love for me. That’s for certain.”

Draco snorted. “No, it’s harder for me because he’s my brother. Especially now that we understand just how truly he is my brother. Whatever she likes in me, she can probably find in him as long as she doesn’t mind it freckled.”

Pansy wasn’t convinced. She planted both her elbows on the desktop in front of them, peering across the classroom at Ronald’s profile as he spoke to Harry. “Your brother is nothing like you, once the snogging starts," she said. "He’s more forceful, almost wild, more to my taste. He’s positively, just so -- by the stars, when will this class end?”

Draco shuddered. “I won't apologize for not wanting to eat you alive. Or maybe some of us just never had to be forceful with you.”

Pansy punched his bicep hard enough to make him cough out a breathy kind of almost yelp.

Ronald knew the sound well and spun around on his stool to glare at them. Draco waved it off and Pansy nodded reassuringly. Ronald turned back when Hermione tugged at his arm. 

After a long day of tagging along on this strained, phony show of affection, Harry was exhausted. When he came into the common room after dinner to find his best friends squashed into an armchair together, trying not to look annoyed as they read from the same charms textbook, he knew he couldn’t bear any more of it today.

“Harry, where are you going?” Hermione called after him. “You’ve got your -- er -- remedial potions lesson with Snape in half an hour.”

“I won’t miss it,” he said, already backing toward the door. “I’m just nervous, I guess. Can’t sit. I’m taking a walk.”

Her voice was still ringing after him as he ducked through the hole. “Half an hour! Thirty-two minutes, to be precise!”

It was good to be away from them, but Harry wasn’t sure where to roam. January nights were too cold for walking outside, so he set off through the corridors, like one of the ghosts only much more quietly. He passed by the stairs, unwilling to begin the descent to Snape’s office where his first Occlumency lesson would take place. Not yet. He kept to the upper floors, where the tower dormitories were, distracting himself, planning for the next DA meeting everyone was clamouring for.

All at once, a voice called his name. It was Ginny Weasley, standing beside the door marked with the eagle knocker that barred the entrance to Ravenclaw tower. “Hey, Harry,” she said. “You alright? You look tormented.”

He huffed, remembering Rita Skeeter’s widely circulated descriptions of him last year. “Yeah, that’s my look. Or so say all the papers.”

She laughed and shoved at him. “Alright now, spill it, Potter. Everyone’s saying Hermione agreed to date our Ron.”

He nodded. “Looks like it, yeah.”

She shook her head. “And here we thought she was such a smart girl. Must be toughest on you though. Gooseberry and all.”

He shrugged, muttering meaninglessly.

“Honestly, I can’t believe it,” Ginny said. “Truly, I can’t. I was happy for Hermione at first, since she’d fancied him so much the past year. But that was before I saw them together. All day they both looked like they were suffering. They’ve got the same look Fred or George would get when they’d row with Percy and Mum would force them to hug and get along.”

Harry had never seen it, but he could picture it all the same, and laughed. It was good to be laughing again.

Ginny went on. “It’s odd, don’t you think? Ron and Hermione used to have some real chemistry. It was rather sweet. But that was before. Grew out of it, I reckon. Shame.”

“Chemistry?” Harry said. What in the world did sweet, shy Ginny Weasley know about romantic chemistry. Only she wasn’t shy anymore. She was like this, funny and frank and -- and rather pretty, now he thought of it.

Just then, the Ravenclaw door opened in Harry’s face, cutting off his view of Ginny. On the other side of it, a tall, dark boy had stepped out. He didn’t see Harry and was rushing at Ginny, taking her by both hands, looming over her. As the door drifted closed, Harry saw it was Michael Corner, the boy who had been sitting with Ginny at their first DA meeting in Hogsmeade. He looked like he was about to swallow her but she ducked and called his name. “Michael, look. Harry’s here.”

He checked himself, straightening away from her. “Oh. Evening, Potter.”

Ginny had taken her hands from Corner’s and was turning him around by the shoulders. “Why don’t you go on up and tell Cho that Harry is here to see her. He’s having a rough day and needs some cheering up. Knowing Cho, she’ll be the same way. Go on then.”

There was nothing for Corner to do but obey. The door closed behind him again, and Ginny turned back to Harry. Her smile was set like a challenge, as if she was daring him to say something about finding her here waiting to be pawed by Michael Corner. “Yes, there’s nothing like a pretty Ravenclaw when you’re lonely, isn’t that right, Harry?”

He sputtered stupidly. Michael Corner? Pretty? What was she saying?

Ginny answered before he could ask. “Corner and I have been going out since school started in the fall,” she said. “Or maybe you hadn’t noticed.”

The part about whether Harry had noticed Ginny with another boy seemed like the biggest challenge of all. But he wasn’t afraid when he answered, “No, I hadn’t.”

Ginny’s fierce look faltered just a little.

“Never would have suspected it,” he admitted again. “I always assumed the reason Corner couldn’t hit you with anything during DA practices was the most obvious reason: the fact that you’re the best at dueling out of the whole lot.”

There was a time, barely remembered now, when Ginny would become speechless and blush whenever Harry spoke in her presence. She’d outgrown it ages ago, but a flash of it reappeared now, like the painful twinge of an old injury. She shook her head, as if to clear it away. “Harry Potter, you -- “

The door was creaking open again and Michael Corner was returning, Cho Chang close behind him. Without looking back at Harry, he took Ginny by the hand and towed her along the corridor as she called out her goodbyes. 

Harry was left alone with Cho, her eyes bright and expectant. But what did Ginny expect him to do with Cho, now that she’d been produced?

“Hi Harry,” Cho beamed, as if she hadn’t been crying the last time he’d seen her.

There were some awkward negotiations wherein they agreed to spend Valentine's Day together in Hogsmeade. And when that was over, all Harry had left to say was, “Um, fancy a quick walk. I mean, quick as in short, not quick as in fast paced. Because, um, I was actually just passing by on my way to Snape -- to Snape’s office, for remedial potions in twenty minutes.”

She looked dismayed on his behalf. “Snape? Oh Harry, how awful for you.”

“Yeah, I’m quite -- “ he swallowed, almost choking on his own saliva, “tense.”

“So,” she began as they set off. “Everyone’s looking forward to the next DA meeting. They really are brilliant. I’ve never been able to -- ”

“Stun anything before,” Harry finished for her. “Yeah, I remember. The things you say to me -- they’re -- memorable.”

Cho gave a nervous but happy laugh. “Oh. Well, remember this then. You’re a far better teacher of Defense Against the Dark Arts than Umbridge will ever be. It isn’t even close.”

He had to accept that. Was this what dating was? Exchanging compliments until you both liked each other more than anyone else? Was this what those Slytherins had done to Ronald and Hermione? It didn’t seem very likely.

With a start, he realized it must be his turn to compliment her. “It’ll be nice when quidditch starts up again,” he said. “I can properly watch you play. Our houses face each other next, don’t they? Sorry, I should know that. But it’s been hard for me to keep up with the schedule ever since…”

No, he’d fumbled it -- brought the conversation back around to poor little Harry Potter.

Cho made a sweet, unhappy sound. “It’s not fair, Harry. Umbridge is the worst. But Ginny is doing well as seeker in your place. She beat Malfoy in the opener, not that he was trying very hard.”

Harry had forgotten about that and smirked. “It wouldn’t have mattered if he had been trying. Ginny’s great,” he said. “In every way. Her whole family is, really.”

This was a new and different kind of conversational misstep for Harry, this over-complimenting of another girl.

Cho took a deep breath and sat on the windowsill at her side. Harry stopped next to her but did not risk looking her in the eye. “It’s easier for some of us to be great,” she said. “Especially Ginny Weasley with her good parents. They’re so good, not even Ronald could turn out bad, no matter what the Malfoys might have taught him.”

“Yeah, but -- those Weasleys, they’re not just following their parents,” Harry insisted.

Cho shrugged, pausing long enough that Harry looked up at her face. “In a way,” she said, “we’re all just following our parents. Think about the members of the DA, Harry. Most of them are people like the Weasleys and like Cedric was. He would have joined, I know it.”

At the mention of Cedric, Harry began to shift uncomfortably on his feet.

Cho went on. “Those kinds of people have good parents who teach them what’s right and how to stand up for it. Even my parents are good, though they aren’t too brave -- worried about their Ministry jobs. But not everyone has that. There’re people like Crabbe and Goyle whose parents teach them to stand up for all the wrong things. And then there’s you, and the Muggleborns, who don’t have anyone and to tell them how to be.”

She reached along the sill and covered his hand with hers. “We’re all following our parents, but people like you, Harry, you’re following your own good hearts. And that’s what makes you special.”

Of all the compliments he’d ever received, this one might have been his favourite. It was better than being told he was a good flyer, or a great wizard, or even that he had his mother’s eyes. It was such a good compliment he was turning his hand beneath hers to hold onto it properly, with all the care and longing Ronald and Hermione hadn’t been able to muster today. 

He was pulling Cho toward himself, stepping closer to her, his eyes closing sooner than last time, more sure of what was happening, and what he had to do. Her mouth touched his, and he opened to kiss her. She was soft and beautiful, still wet but with a warm intimacy, not an erratic leaking of tears. He held her closer this time too, no light passing between their bodies where he pressed her against his chest. Cho Chang, saying nice things to him, not dating a Slytherin he hated, letting him run his hand down the impossibly smooth curtain of thick black hair falling over her back. She had mentioned Cedric’s name, but only once, and without any tears. Tonight, this kiss was just for him, for his good heart.

And then he was wondering, somewhere high in his brain as his appetites worked his lips against Cho Chang’s, if Ginny might come back and catch them like this.

He broke away. “Sorry,” he said. “Snape’s lesson -- “

“There’s still five minutes,” she said, her arms closing around his neck now.

He couldn’t argue with that.

\------------------------------------------

“Can I turn the page now?” Hermione asked from where she was wedged between Ronald and the side of the armchair.

“Please yourself. I’m not reading it.”

“Ronald!”

“What? I’m sat here with you, keeping up appearances, like I’m supposed to,” he said. “Do you think all of Gryffindor has seen us yet? You think it’d be okay if I -- you know -- went off and -- read a different book for awhile?”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not holding you captive, if that’s what you mean. Go on. But give me a tiny kiss on the face before you leave. Like you’d kiss your sister, only not so anyone knows it’s like kissing your sister.”

“Hermione, when was the last time you saw me kiss my sister? Never, that’s when.”

“Well then think of the last pure kiss you received from someone roughly your own age. Where did that come from?” she said, turning the page. “Do you even remember?”

“Easy. That was you,” he said. “That peck before the quidditch season opener. I was shocked by it, but not really -- well, you know. You were there too. It was sweet, but lacklustre.”

The charms book slammed shut. “Lacklustre?”

He gave a wary smile. “Yeah. It was nice and all, just not… I mean, it was a good thing to find out -- a hint that we -- that we’re such good friends.”

She raised the book as if to swat him with it, but set it down when he threw his leg over her knees and patted her hair. “But this is nice, right?” he said. “There's no need to be uncomfortable with each other. I could get used to you and me like this, cuddly friends. No fighting allowed.”

“Just try me, Ronald,” she said. “Go read your other book. I’ll meet you in the library later to start the DADA homework and meet Harry after his lesson.”

Ronald groaned but smacked a dry kiss against her forehead in parting before squashing her even farther into the chair as he stood to leave.

As the chair emptied and she pulled in her feet to curl up in it, she fingered the spot on her head where Ronald had kissed her. No moisture, no drama. Maybe this was rather nice. And she could get used to it.

By the time Draco’s signal finally came through Hermione's galleon, Ronald and Pansy were already in the vanished room, spending time alone together. It meant Hermione had to meet him elsewhere, in the little-traveled stairwell above the kitchens. It smelled like boiled potato water but she was happy to be there anyway, standing on a stair above Draco, face to face, greeting him with a kiss.

Maybe they’d wound themselves up, watching frustrated as they each touched someone else all day, but the kiss was intense, like those kisses from the library, months ago, when they could still count exactly how many they’d had. From where she stood above him, she raised her foot and hooked her heel into the back of his knee. He swayed closer to her, voicing his approval without words.

Even so, she broke away to speak -- or, tried to, talking against his mouth as he continued to kiss her. “Mm-Malfoy, am I a bad kisser?”

He didn’t hesitate. “No,” he said, letting her lip slip free of where he'd been holding it lightly between his teeth. “Not even when you won’t stop talking.”

She smiled. “Good.”

But then Draco was breaking away, his posture stiffening. “Why? Who told you that? Did -- don’t -- did Ronald kiss you?”

“No, no, no,” she hurried to say, dropping kisses all over Draco’s scowling eyebrows. “But we did talk about that time I kissed his cheek for luck before quidditch. You were there. It was in the dining hall. Ronald said it was ‘lacklustre.’”

Draco’s shoulders relaxed, his mouth falling on hers again. “That’s good,” he said. “He’s got no business feeling any -- lustre for you. Especially since, by that time, you had already fallen hopelessly, irretrievably for me.”

She laughed. “You want all my lustre for yourself?”

“Doesn’t matter if I want it. It’s mine all the same.”

“Shut up.”

They carried on until the time came when Harry’s lesson would be ending, and she ought to be in the library with Ronald, waiting for him. Draco had come along but he was sitting at a table with Pansy and Nott, watching across the open space in the centre of the library when Harry finally appeared. 

Harry looked awful, pale, his hairline damp with sweat. The lesson had been even worse than he’d feared -- almost violent, no tenderness of encouragement from Snape at all, only cruelty. But Harry had learned something. 

The “weapon” Sirius had spoken of at the end of the summer -- the thing Voldemort wanted to bring to the battle this time that he hadn’t had before -- was not something buried in Harry himself. It was an object, an actual thing that could be held, but not by just anyone, and hidden, but not just anywhere. Thanks to the interference of Snape’s lessons, Harry knew where it was. It was in London, at the Ministry, deep, deep in the earth, in the Department of Mysteries, behind the door Mr. Weasley had been protecting when he was attacked by a snake possessed by Voldemort.

“Well, we can’t do anything about this weapon until we know what it is,” Hermione said. “If you went to the Ministry yourself, you’d just run into a member of the Order protecting it, wouldn’t you? Or, if they’ve given that up since Mr. Weasley got hurt, and you could get past the door, would you know the weapon if you saw it? No, we're not ready. We need to think. We need to plan.”

The word “plan” never failed to have an exhausting, disheartening effect on Harry. He slumped against the library table, his glasses pressing painfully into his temple.

“Come on, mate,” Ronald said, standing up as Pansy watched him move. “Let’s head back to the common room. You did good tonight. It’s enough.”

But at the common room, Fred and George were in full showmen mode, demonstrating their new headless hats, hawking them to the gathered crowd. Ronald was relieved they weren’t selling love potions. Hermione was relieved they weren’t recruiting first years as test subjects. But Harry couldn’t bear the ruckus and went right up to bed.

Ronald and Hermione sunk back into their armchair, which was actually the perfect place to hold a secret conference in a crowded room.

“We need to activate Draco, don’t we?” Ronald said. “We need him to go back to the manor, snoop around, ask some questions, all innocent like, and see if he can find out what You-know-who is looking for. Until we know that, there’s not much point trying to get ourselves behind that door he’s been dreaming of all year. We don’t even know if it’s worth the trouble.”

Hermione frowned. “Activate him? Your brother is not a robot.”

“A what?”

She rolled her eyes. “Never mind. Just remember how dangerous your house is now. If You-know-who is there, it won’t be like you remember it."

"Him? In my house?"

"Well, he has to be somewhere. And we can be almost sure your Auntie Bella is at your house. She's the next worse thing to You-know-who. If we send Draco off into that, he might never be the same. They might...” She couldn’t finish, remembering the taut, smooth length of perfect, unmarked skin on Draco’s left forearm.

Ronald nodded miserably, at a complete loss. He knew by now when to keep quiet and let the both of them think.

Hermione’s hand clamped on his knee. “Ronald!” she said. “Remember what you said, when you were explaining it all to Harry? You told him to think of Draco as another Snape.”

“Right. He hated that.”

“Yes, but maybe that’s where we need to start anyway. Maybe we get Draco his own lessons with Snape.”

Ronald was getting it. “Like, spy lessons? Two-face training?”

She nodded. “Yes. We have to. Maybe Occlumency too. You said Draco might have a natural talent for it. Whatever he needs to know, Snape could teach him. He has to. I can’t see how else Draco can help and still make it out unscathed.”


	24. Twenty-four

"Look at him," Harry said, glaring at Draco Malfoy from around the corner at the top of the stairwell leading to Snape's dungeon office. "He’s just standing there knocking, like it's normal for students to drop in on Snape uninvited, looking for huge, dangerous favours."

From the bottom of the stairs, Draco sneered back at Harry and Ronald. He mouthed the word, “Quiet,” before turning to knock again, louder.

“It’s going to be fine. Just you watch,” Ronald whispered from over Harry’s shoulder. “Snape gives him whatever he wants. It’s creepy as anything but -- there it is.”

Harry glanced back at him. “But why? It makes no sense. Snape’s got no problem abusing you like the rest of us.”

Ronald shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe he’s got a bit of a fancy for mum. She’s considered quite beautiful and charming, you know. And since Draco’s her only biological child...”

Harry shuddered. “Trust me. Having Snape fancy your mum is no way to get him to treat you decently.”

Ronald nodded. “Yeah, right.”

Harry shuddered again, as he’d been doing at regular intervals all day. How had he let Hermione talk him into getting Draco involved in figuring out what Voldemort and the Death Eaters were up to in the Department of Mysteries? She was right that things were only getting worse, and something had to be done. Dumbledore wanted Harry’s visionary connection to Voldemort shut down, so without using it, they needed to find out what the hidden weapon was, what Voldemort might use it for, and what made it worth all the pain and chaos it was creating.

Two innocent men had already been put under Imperius curses and sent to break through the locked door from Harry’s dreams. Sturgis Podmore was sent to Azkaban over it, and Broderick Bode ended up injured and eventually dead by Devil's Snare strangulation while he recovered in the hospital. Then there was the attack on Arthur Weasley which Harry had seen firsthand. Horrible. But at least the weapon -- whatever it was -- was still safely hidden.

Harry still hadn’t told Ronald that he’d learned from his visions that Lucius Malfoy was the person who’d cast those disastrous Imperius curses in the first place. Did that make Mr. Malfoy a murderer? He hadn’t meant to kill anyone, but poor Bode wound up dead all the same.

Below them, Draco waited at the door. He’d called himself Harry’s black knight, and here he was, jumping out over the line of the other chess men toward the opposing king. It sounded heroic but Harry didn’t trust him. Maybe he never would. Ronald did. Hermione did. And frankly, Harry needed to make some move against Voldemort besides trying to learn how to shut his mind to him. He did trust Dumbledore but he hated these orders. Similar strategies had failed them before. Concentrating on the tournament and ignoring the Death Eaters during fourth year had ended extraordinarily badly.

The door at the bottom of the stairs was flung open with Snape’s signature histrionic flair. “Yes, Draco?” he said.

“Sir, forgive the intrusion,” he began, bowing slightly, “it’s just that, I’ve run into a personal problem -- a family problem -- and I don't trust anyone else to help.”

From above them, Harry scoffed quietly. “Will you listen to that simpering -- “

Ronald silenced him with a jab of his elbow just as a pair of arms circled his waist. He barely swallowed his yelp, flinching, and nearly striking out before he saw it was Pansy grasping him around his middle. He raised his arm and she stuck her head beneath it, smirking at Harry.

At the sound, Snape stepped out into the landing, crowding Draco and looking up into the shadows at the top of the stairs. Harry and Ronald held their breath as Pansy suppressed a laugh. Snape's eyes narrowed as he listened for them. 

“Being the head of Slytherin house, I am always prepared to see to the well-being of all its students,” he said, as if reciting lines for an audition. “Right this way, Mr. Malfoy.”

The enormous old door closed with a gentle click.

Harry and Ronald slumped out of their hiding place.

Ronald let out his breath and squeezed Pansy against his side. “You -- I thought you were supposed to be sneaky,” he said.

She snickered. “And I thought you were supposed to be brave. Who knew you’d spook so easily? Well, no harm done.” She looked past Ronald to nod at Harry. “Potter.”

He might have shuddered. “Parkinson.”

Ronald was tucking her hair behind her ear, smoothing it where it had been disordered when he jumped. He was muttering sweet, teasing reprimands about her needing to behave herself.

“Keep my hands to myself, should I?”

“Now, that’s not what I said -- “

“It’s useless,” Harry burst, drawing their attention away from each other. “This will all be over in minutes. Draco will ask Snape for help. Snape will send him away, and maybe he’ll report him to Dumbledore or your parents. He’ll never convince him.”

Pansy shrugged. “If Draco can’t get his help, then no one can.”

Inside Snape’s office, he was pouring tea, settling the boy into a comfortable seat opposite his large, potion-stained desk.

“What is it you need?” Snape began. “I understand you haven’t seen your mother since arriving here during the holidays, but you have my word that she is safe and well, regardless of the company anyone may suspect her of keeping.”

On hearing this, Draco was both relieved and bristling slightly, inexplicably. “Thank you, sir. But as long as she has her own wits about her, and Father there to protect her, I needn’t worry. Isn’t that right, sir?”

Snapped frowned into his teacup but said, “Indeed.”

Draco cleared his throat. “It appears our family troubles have become front page news, what with Aunt Bellatrix getting loose and causing trouble. She’s been with my parents since her escape. Mother told us as much when she rushed us back to school. And thanks to Ronald’s connections, I know what happened to Arthur Weasley, and that Potter still dreams about the Department of Mysteries nearly every night -- “

“Even so, you do not know nearly as much as you think you do,” Snape interrupted, setting his tea down hard enough to add another stain to his desktop. “Your parents have decided that the less involved you are in your aunt’s unlawful return, the better. Know too that your parents insulate you from their house guests at great peril to themselves. Something for which you ought to be grateful.”

“What does that mean, sir?” Draco said, his voice rising.

Snape leaned over his desk, his voice low and silky by contrast. “It means that at this moment, your father is working to obtain what the Dark Lord desires without involving you or your brother as the Dark Lord would have had him do.“

“His desire -- the thing hidden in the Department of Mysteries -- “

Snape tugged at his cuffs, as if preparing to set to work. “That is just the beginning. And the pursuit of it grows ever more dangerous. Your father has exhausted attempts to please the Dark Lord through the manipulation of other people and must now -- get his own hands dirty, as it were.” 

Draco flinched, knowing well that there was little his father hated more than dirty hands. “So he’s about to put himself in danger,” he surmised.

Snape closed his eyes, as if considering his words very carefully. “If he has not brought you into his confidence in this, I must respect his fatherly judgment and not discuss it further.” 

“Please, sir,” Draco pressed. “Father is letting his emotions cloud his judgment, fatherly or otherwise. Ronald and I aren’t children. And you’re the only teacher here who trusts students with unvarnished truth.”

Opening his eyes, Snape spoke with a new darkness. “You are indeed children. And what is unvarnished, is also unprotected.” 

Snape moved to the fire, spinning to face its orange glow. “The Dark Lord understands your father must be dirty and beaten before he can be forced to relinquish you and your brother into his service as Hogwarts operatives, close to Potter. To bring that about in a swift, natural way, he has given Lucius Malfoy one final chance to procure what he desires. But it was never intended that your father would succeed. This exercise may serve to further the Dark Lord‘s purposes, but its paramount function is to degrade and punish your father for certain -- missteps during your second year here.”

Before the fireplace, Snape spun, the flames at his back now, his face in shadows as he spoke. “You see, Draco, the Dark Lord does not forgive and he does not compromise. But he does penalize. He will be repaid. He wants the weapon, Potter, and both of the Malfoy heirs -- all of you. Short of that, there is nothing Lucius can do to satisfy him.”

Draco’s voice was dry and strained. “But Father may succeed all the same. Especially if -- ”

“No, Draco,” Snape said over him in a loud, unequivocal voice, not quite a shout. “It is highly unlikely, but not quite impossible that your father could succeed. You, however, will not aid him in any attempt to do so. Your only role in this is to do nothing to distract or frustrate him.”

Draco stood, shaking his head. “I can’t accept that, sir. I have to help him. Perhaps not directly, but by working secretly. If it’s as bad as all of that, then we’ve nothing to lose in me satisfying the Dark Lord, at least in part, by turning myself over and doing what you do: working both sides.”

Snape waved a hand, dismissing Draco already. 

He insisted all the same. “I’ll go to the manor, present myself to the Dark Lord on our own terms. Before he learns how to use Potter’s connection against him, we may have some time to gather more information, gain his trust, misdirect him -- use the whole thing to our advantage.”

Snape coughed out a single joyless laugh. “You think it’s that easy? To stand before the Dark Lord and misrepresent yourself? To lie to him undetected takes years of practice in Occlumency. There isn’t time.”

“Then we need to begin right away. Train me,” Draco said, stepping up to meet Snape nose to nose. “Help me, sir. Do something. It seems foolish to close down Potter’s connection to him without doing all we can to leverage it first.”

Snape’s head snapped, his eyes wide, fixing on Draco’s as if he’d said something to prick his ears. This leverage was also what he wanted. It was one of the reasons why his Occlumency lessons with Potter were more like exploratory brain surgery than like productive classes. Snape was trying to trust Dumbledore, to be patient and follow his orders, but he was of the same mind as Draco. 

Snape knew there were things to be learned about the Dark Lord’s plans and desires that even he, a trusted servant, could not see. The connection between Harry Potter and the Dark Lord was both a weakness and a strength. Dumbledore found it gruesome and sought only to protect Potter from it. But Snape knew the power of the Dark Lord more intimately than Dumbledore, or anyone without the dark mark burnt into their flesh. 

Dumbledore had forbidden Harry to act on his visions. He had forbidden Snape to do anything more for Harry than teach him Occlumency. But Draco was under no orders at all. He was free to act. Maybe the way around Dumbledore’s objections was sitting right in front of him, waiting with wide grey eyes, offering himself, foolishly fearless and willing. 

But this tall, overconfident teenager was also the baby from years ago.

The day after Draco’s birth, Severus could wait no longer to visit Malfoy Manor. Narcissa had had the paternity potion waiting, stashed in her room to be used the moment the medi-witches cleansed their hands and left. Before he arrived, Severus had already been told the results of the potion test, and that the baby was not his son. He believed what Narcissa had told him, yet still, he wanted to see the child for himself.

Not knowing how he would be received, he came to the front doors of the manor, bold in broad daylight. He had rehearsed possible scenarios in his mind as he came walking up the gravel drive. If he was handled roughly, he would answer with roughness of his own, with questions about whether Lucius had any news about the baby born just weeks earlier to the Weasley family. Another boy, their sixth. Arthur must be such a proud father.

Yes, the Weasley’s newest son, a reminder to Lucius Malfoy that he and Severus Snape were not so different.

But as he approached the doors to the manor, solid oak painted black, they opened for him without even a knock. The grand hall was empty as Snape stepped inside, but an inner door stood open, the drawing room. Snape found the Malfoys arranged as if posing in an informal but elegant tableau. Still delicate from the birth, Narcissa reclined on a sofa while Lucius stood in a sunny, floor-length window with the tiny bundle in his arms, the sweet newborn son shining in a haze of white blond, more like a halo than hair.

It was plain from the child’s face -- still so small -- that he belonged to the man who’d given him his name. The baby was not Snape’s child, but he felt himself in him nonetheless. The sense of it shook through Severus the instant Lucius placed Draco in his arms. He stood at Lucius’s side, holding the baby, dressed in black against the white light flooding through the window. Narcissa watched the three of them, her eyes bright with tears. 

This tiny thing had been a part of Narcissa when she joined herself to him. In that moment of intimacy, something of Draco had been there, safe and sealed away but present. In that moment, the three of them had been one. Lucius as well, as he lived in the cells that were Draco. When Severus took her, she brought all of them with her. 

Biologically, sleeping with pregnant Narcissa almost a year before meant nothing. But magically, Severus felt something deep and primeval for the little boy. 

He bent his head to smell the sweet scent of this still perfect child. Ever since his union with the boy’s mother, Severus had carried a secret hope that the baby would be his own, chaotic and confounding as that would have been. And now, that hope needed to transform into something else. It could become bitter rejection, or earnest devotion. 

Narcissa rose from the sofa and crossed the room to where Snape stood with her child. Lucius had to stay close to him, the baby’s hand clenched, as it was, around his finger. Narcissa threaded her arm through Lucius’s, her head against his shoulder, and sighed. 

She may have already found her peace with the new life all of them were beginning, but Snape’s mind and heart were churning. He should leave the Malfoys to themselves, the way he’d left Lily Evans to James Potter and the rest of them, left her to bear the child that would separate them forever. She said it was his politics that pushed him away but -- no, there was no point thinking of it now. That was his past, and this...

He looked down at the child again, saw his own body holding him up. Sunlight refracted in the cut stones of Narcissa’s bracelet, scattering flashes of light and colour on Snape’s black robes. He quieted his mind and let his heart choose for itself between a future of bitterness or devotion. It chose devotion, and he pressed his lips to the impossible softness of the baby’s head.

“You must agree to be his godfather, Severus,” Lucius had said -- said it even though Snape was almost certain he knew what had happened that morning in Spinner’s End, while he had been missing, arrested, held by Aurors.

Snape was honored but believed godfathers were for Muggle-borns and half-bloods. His own Muggle godfather had certainly been useless to him. 

So he answered, “There is no need for empty titles and rituals. Instead, accept my pledge, here and now, with the sun itself as witness, that Draco Lucius Black Malfoy shall ever have claim on the guidance, the protection, the adoration of Severus Snape, for as long as I live.” 

In his office now, with the boy grown as tall as himself, Snape was torn between his promise to keep Draco from immediate harm, and the need to let him take risks to protect his future. Draco was clever, sly, but it was still too dangerous. Snape was opening his eyes, shaking his head to tell Draco ‘no’ and send him away.

“I’m going to do it anyway, sir,” Draco said before Snape could speak. “It doesn't matter what anyone says. I’m going to go home, meet my aunt, and maybe the Dark Lord himself. I’m going to scheme and spy and protect my family. I know I can’t do much, but I can’t do nothing either.”

Snape was speechless all over again. All he could manage was, “Draco, don’t. You have no idea -- ”

He shook his head. “I’ve already decided. And either I can begin as I am, or you can take a few weeks to teach me some of what you do to keep yourself insulated and aloof when you’re fooling them.”

Snape spun again, distancing himself, moving to sit in an armchair before the fire. “As an officer of the school, if I want you held here indefinitely, you will be.”

“And how will my parents explain that to the Dark Lord? They can't procrastinate much longer. They will run out of excuses to hide us, and soon. We need to train and plan before we're dragged helpless before him." Draco sat on the rug at Snape's feet. "And as distasteful to me as it is, if Potter is the best chance we have of containing the Dark Lord, we need to work together."

Snape flipped Draco's fringe out of his eyes. "We are working with him. You are engaging with Umbridge while mitigating any real harm to students. Yes, I have noticed. And I am teaching Potter Occlumency. Trying to, at any rate."

"Teach me," Draco said. "I'll be loads better than him."

Snape huffed. "Narcissa Black's son -- you would be. Your mother could look the Dark Lord in the eye, tell him a dead man was alive or a live man was dead, and she would do it with such confidence that he wouldn’t think to check for himself. As occlumens go, there is no one like your mother.”

“Let’s start with that then, sir,” Draco said, quietly, with smooth persuasion. “Teach me Occlumency, tell me how to treat my aunt, her husband, the Dark Lord himself. Tell me what only you can. And by the February Hogsmeade trip, I’ll be ready.”

\----------------------------------

It was well after dinner when Hermione came through the false wall of the vanished room. Draco stood up from where he’d been sitting on the table, waiting, ready to meet her, but stopping when she raised one hand.

“Harry says,” she began, “Harry says you convinced him.”

He swallowed, nodding. “Yes. Snape is going to train me in Occlumency and the rest of it, starting tomorrow.”

“In,” she interjected, “in preparation to meet Voldemort.”

He shrugged, trying to smile reassuringly. “Or maybe just my mad aunt.”

He paused, waiting for her to go on. Surely she was pleased -- not chuffed, but satisfied. His decision to take a stand that wasn’t neutral began with a suggestion from her, after all.

She might have been satisfied, but she was not happy. There was more she wanted to say, but she had stalled in the act, standing with one hand still raised to hold him off, her shoulders rounding ever lower as she crumpled, speechless before his eyes.

“Granger, don’t cry,” he said, crossing the floor.

“I -- I didn’t think he’d actually let you. They always tell Harry ‘no’, and ‘wait.’” Her voice was lost in a rising sob. “Harry always puts himself in danger in spite of what they tell him, not because of it. That awful Snape, telling you yes.”

Draco took her in his arms, rocking her gently. “Don’t blame him. It’s a lifelong pattern. Haven’t you heard? Snape always gives me what I want. He’s as bad as my parents for that.”

He was trying to lighten the mood, but she didn’t find it funny. Everything was terrible. It didn’t matter that she knew this was how things had to be. She wanted to hide, tucking her arms between them, her face disappearing between her hair and his robes. 

In return, he held her as close as he could. “You thought Snape would tell me to toddle off and I’d settle into decoding Potter’s visions with Ronald? Scouring the newspaper for signs of Death Eater misbehaviour with you? Those jobs are taken.”

“Right, and your job was to handle Umbridge,” she said.

“Umbridge is a nightmare but she’s not a Death Eater,” he said. “She’s not hiding in my parents house waiting to strike.”

She sniffed against the front of his robes. “I don’t know what I thought,” she said. “But it wasn’t that you’d go marching off to Voldemort in time for the Hogsmeade trip. By Valentines Day -- “

Draco hissed. “Oh, it is Valentines, isn’t it.”

She gave a mighty sniff. “Not that I care about something like a stupid, fake holiday.” 

“Well, you should,” he answered, smoothing her hair with a motion not unlike the one she used to soothe Crookshanks. “Valentines -- it’s the day everyone else will be drinking tea under floating Cupids at Madam Puddifoot’s. Snogging in public and feeding each other chocolate.”

“I’ve always known not to expect that for us,” she said, nuzzling her jaw against him, not unlike Crookshanks herself.

Draco’s playful tone was now serious. “No, but you have every right to. You should expect every good and pretty thing. And I should be the one to bring them to you. You are the best girl, my girl.” 

He took her face between his hands and turned it up so he could see her. Her eyes were shining with the last of her tears, her cheeks rosy and wet, her lips were swollen from crying. She was a mess, and he bent to kiss her anyway, softly, without asking much, yet offering his whole self as best he knew how.

She tasted the salt of her own tears in his kiss, rising high onto her toes, her arms locked around him. He knew she was in a tender state and was restraining the passion he felt for her. But she felt it in the slip of his tongue. Her pulse thumped and he bent lower, pulling her up and into himself by the fist he had clenched in the small of her back. Her voice sounded, still too much like a sob for him to press her any further. He broke away and hushed her, relaxing his fist to stroke her back. 

“I’m going to be fine,” she said. “The crying -- all it does is relieve my tension. Boys always overreact to it. But don’t be too bothered. All the pressure -- it builds and then it breaks. And it leaves me so tired.”

He led her to sit beneath the windows, on the spot where they’d been standing the first time he kissed her. He took off his robe and used one of his mother’s favourite spells to transform it into a cushion large enough for them to sit on. She took off her robe as well, and wrapped it around them as she settled beside him.

“If you’re tired,” he said, “then sleep. Just for a little while. I’ll stay up and keep watch.”

She blinked her damp eyelashes. “Aren’t you tired too?”

He nodded. “Yes, but for me, being tired doesn’t necessarily align with falling asleep. It’ll be fine. Just rest.”

She blinked at him again before closing her eyes and reclining against his shoulder. She wanted to tell him things that could not possibly be true -- not yet. She was only sixteen, for stars’ sake, and she sank into the safety of quiet. 

When she was almost asleep, her movements languid and heavy, she shifted against him, pushing him onto his back. He didn’t resist, and lay back onto the cushion, grinning. His transformed robe was too small to be a proper bed even when she pulled her knees into her chest, curled into her smallest shape. He curved himself around her, his chest against her spine as she drifted away. With a whispered spell, the lights in the room went dark.


	25. Twenty-five

When Hermione Granger curled up on a cushion on the floor of the vanished room and fell asleep with Draco Malfoy’s arm around her waist and his face in her hair, she had complete confidence that he would not fall asleep himself. He did as well. He meant to enjoy being near her, letting her rest until just before curfew, when he’d nuzzle her awake and send her to her dorm. But as he lay against her in the dark, the sound of her steady breath, the slow rhythm of its rise and fall against his chest, was like a spell, sending sleep like an enchantment out of her and into him. 

It was her who woke up first, checking her watch by the light of her wand, clucking her tongue once she saw that curfew was long past.

"Malfoy," she muttered. There was no point in getting angry about it. And perhaps it would yield something nice for her after all.

Draco was sleeping obliviously next to her. Unconscious like this, maybe he’d mistaken her for Ronald, and that was why he’d turned his back to her. 

This was not to be borne.

In the small space between Draco’s back and the castle’s stone wall, Hermione rolled off her back and onto her side. She pillowed her head with her own bent arm and pressed her cheek into the hollow between his shoulder blades. His breathing grew momentarily louder at her touch, but he slept on. 

His body was much larger and longer than hers. She knew it from standing next to him but the effect was different as she lay beside him. With slow care, she dropped her arm over his, reaching up and across his back and shoulder, her wrist coming to rest at his elbow. The experiment seemed to demand that she make the same measurement with her leg. She wasn’t sure where her shoes had gone, but she didn’t fret over it as she extended her sock-foot over his hip and down the length of his leg as far as she could reach. Sure enough, her ankle came to rest at his knee.

Their proportions were mismatched, but perfectly so. She grinned into his back, nestling closer. Her hand on his arm trailed up over his elbow, onto his bicep, over the dome of his shoulder and back down, tracing the contours and definition of the lean muscle beneath his cotton shirt. 

In his sixteenth year, he was well beyond boyish gawkiness, taking on a more mature bulk. The realization made her foot itch to track up and down his leg, feeling the contours there too. But her rational mind spoke back to her impulses, telling her this was too much of a liberty to take with a sleeping person, even one she’d been snogging for months.

In a strange mix of satisfaction at having explored him a bit, and a complete lack of satisfaction at not exploring more, she sighed into his spine, resigning herself to dealing with the bad situation they were in, out past curfew with her separated from her dormitory by the alarm Umbridge had set on the entrance to Gryffindor Tower. 

She would wake him gently, withdrawing her hand from his arm and stroking the well-groomed hairline at the nape of his neck. He shivered at the touch but settled back into sleep again. 

“Constant vigilance,” she mouthed against the back of his neck.

He twitched, moaning softly.

She propped herself on her elbow, bending to blow lightly against the curve of his ear.

He swiped at his ear with the back of his hand before letting it fall back, limp against his cheek.

Finally, she called him out of sleep in a sweet voice, chastising him, but with the trace of a laugh. “Malfoy, you didn’t stay awake.”

His steady breathing crashed into a gasp. “Granger?" he said, looking over his shoulder into the dark.

“Yes, I’m still here.”

He swore. “Curfew?”

"Missed. By at least a couple of hours."

He swore again, rubbing at his eyes now. "Sorry.”

Hermione hooked an arm around his shoulders, pulling him backward, trying to roll his face toward herself. He didn’t let her turn him, pulling his knees into his chest. “Wait a bit,” he said. 

“Wait? What’s wrong?” In the moonlit room, she frowned over his shoulder.

He gave a low laugh. “Nothing. It’s just that I’m very, very pleased to wake up with you. But I’m also a gentleman."

“Gentleman -- oh.” Her eyes widened with understanding. After a moment of silence, she laughed back at him. “Fine, Malfoy. Say no more,” she said, sinking her chin into his shoulder. “Sorry.”

He reached a hand behind himself in a blind attempt to pat her knee that was more of a thigh grab that didn’t help matters at all. "Don’t be sorry, Granger. It’s not your fault. It’s not mine either, frankly. Involuntary, really -- “

“I said, say no more.” 

“Right,” he laughed. “Not one more word to the prim perfect princess.”

She punched lightly at his shoulder. “I never said it was anything inappropriate,” she said. “It’s just nature, science, biological science. Not all that big a deal really -- “

“Well it is between me and you,” Draco interrupted. What he wanted to do was acknowledge that what was building between the two of them, while they were still so young, was risky and real and needed to be approached carefully, respectfully. What he said was, “Gentlemanly -- that’s how I was raised, mad and hypocritical as my family may be. Looks like when it comes to being a gentleman, my father intends for me to do as he says, and not as he does.”

She bowed her forehead against his arm. "Try not to judge him too harshly for Ronald's paternity until you hear him out properly. It’s not fair to him, or Mrs. Weasley."

“Or her husband or my mum,” Draco finished. He was moving to face her, talk of his father’s complicated family life driving all lust away for a moment. He blew his breath out, ruffling her hair and pulling her close. "I'm not sure hearing dad out is something I’ll be able to do for a long time. Especially not with the Lestranges and who knows what else in the house.”

At the mention of his return to his now very dangerous home, Hermione murmured a tiny protest and rubbed her nose against his neck. 

“What I do want you to know," he said, lifting her chin, "is that, no matter what kind of a creep my father may be, I’m not after luring you into dark corners to sleep with you."

Her eyebrows lifted. "You mean, even though that’s what we just did?”

He sputtered. “You know that -- that’s not -- “

She kissed him quiet. And she felt safe enough, and still curious enough to push him a little further. She slid an arm under his, her hand gripped around his shoulder from behind, before she leaned back, tilting both of them in her direction. She wasn’t strong enough to force Draco, nor would she want to, but she hoped to signal to him that she no longer wanted to lie side by side as they kissed. She wanted to be on her back, with Draco above her, covering all of her. She had measured his arms and legs against hers, and now she wanted to measure his weight, his gravity pushing her down.

He misread it, assuming she was falling over, and he over-corrected, pulling her hard in his direction. She used the momentum to boost herself on top of him, her ankle clamped around his leg to pull her on top without parting her legs too widely and offending the gentlemanly ways he’d only just professed. 

It was still too much. A grunt sounded in his throat and he broke away from her kiss. “By the stars, Granger.” His hands were on her hips, holding her body still.

Her tone was concerned. “Am I heavy? Am I hurting you?”

He gave a low laugh. “No and no.”

“Don’t you like me up here?”

He scoffed. “Yes, very much.”

“Really?”

“Yes, of course, Granger,” he said, frustrated. “There’s no need for us to argue about that. I mean, I could prove it but -- “

“But you’re not your father,” she finished, sounding like a skilled barrister who’d just got her witness to make the admission she was waiting for. “You are your dear, noble self. You’re in command of your desires. Even in a situation like this, you’re not taking advantage of my,” she wriggled slightly against him, “my innocence. You’re lovely.”

He was laughing again, bracing his hands on her to keep her motionless. “I’m also only human. And it’s time we got you safely home.”

\------------------------------

There was no way to get Hermione back into her dormitory but to trip Umbridge’s alarm. When she first installed it, the aim was to catch people sneaking out more than alerting her that someone had sneaked in. Protecting Gryffindor from other houses was not Professor Umbridge’s concern.

“It’s going to make a terrible racket though,” Hermione whispered to Draco as they crept along the halls, cloaked in disillusionment spells. “Umbridge herself might appear to investigate.”

Draco snorted. “At this hour? No, she’ll probably send Montague. But by the time he gets up here, you’ll be in bed, like an innocent.”

She huffed. “I am an innocent. You’ve seen to that. I do worry what my roommates may say, seeing as my bed would have been empty when they turned in.”

“They’ll just assume you were downstairs, sleeping cheek-to-cheek on the sofa with Ronald again,” Draco said, his tone slightly bitter.

Hermione pursed her lips. He was right. And if she told such a story, Ronald would corroborate it to protect them. 

They parted at the top of the stairs, Hermione making her way to the portrait hole slowly to give Draco time to make it back to the unalarmed dungeon dormitory door before Montague started storming through the corridors hunting for loose Gryffindors. The fat lady snoozed in her frame, feigning sleep even as Hermione spoke the password. Keeping her eyes closed was her way of avoiding being questioned if anyone came demanding to know who had been coming and going through her portrait after hours.

As the door closed behind Hermione, and she dashed up the stairs to the girls’ dormitory, the alarm began to wail. She barely managed to dive beneath her covers before Lavender and Parvati were tossing in their beds, annoyed, and calling out for someone to shut it off. Hermione shimmied out of her uniform under her covers. That was the last time she’d let Draco Malfoy promise to wake her up for anything.

All of Gryffindor house was tired and cranky in the morning, everyone complaining about the alarm in the night. They were slow in arriving in the Great Hall for breakfast in the morning, causing a bit of a jam at the entrance. Ronald and Hermione were waiting, hand in hand, to get inside when Professor McGonagall called Hermione out of the queue.

“In my office, Miss Granger, if you please.”

It had to be about the alarm. Would Umbridge be waiting there too, the way she had been when Harry got banned from quidditch? Hermione looked back pleadingly at Harry and Ronald as she followed McGonagall across the hall.

From behind her desk, Professor McGonagall stirred a drop of honey into her tea and cleared her throat. “Anyone who has ever served as head of a house at Hogwarts knows that breaches in curfew occur so frequently that strict discipline of them could occupy our time completely.”

Hermione’s eyes still roved the room, watching for Umbridge to spring out. “Yes, Professor. Terribly bothersome, I’m sure.”

McGonagall hummed. “What you may not know is that, though we do not investigate every infraction, the dormitory is nonetheless charmed to report students being absent after curfew. Professor Umbridge’s alarm on the door is redundant, useless, and shows her ignorance of the Hogwarts castle and its ways. Every head of house knows when curfew has been broken and uses his or her personal judgment to decide what constitutes a breach egregious enough to be bothered with. And you, Miss Granger, have committed just such a breach.”

She sipped her tea and set in down without so much as a clinking of porcelaine. 

Hermione bowed her head. “I’m sorry, Professor, it was completely my own fault -- “

“You are very lucky the Slytherin prefects Professor Umbridge sent to search the corridors found no trace of you or of Draco Malfoy -- “

“Draco Malfoy?”

“Yes, Miss Granger, both Professor Snape and myself noted two students reporting back to their houses roughly three and a half hours too late. I’m not one to boast my own brilliance but you may be sure Professor Snape is clever enough to have put together what happened. You were out late last night in the company of Mr. Malfoy -- not the Malfoy you hold hands with in my class, but the other one.”

It sounded so awful to hear McGonagall’s voice saying it that way. Hermione couldn’t possibly explain herself. She tried anyway. “Ronald knows about it. He’s pretending he’s dating me to hide me and Draco from his parents. If they knew, they might send Draco to Durmstrang.”

“I can’t say I don’t see the wisdom in that,” McGonagall said. She might have shuddered as she considered Hermione and Draco together. She quickly composed herself, saying, “However, your social life is not nearly as much of a concern of mine as is your safety. Flouting the orders of Professor Umbridge could bring great peril to yourself, Hermione. This is not what anyone at Hogwarts wants for our star student in her OWL year. That you weren’t discovered and subjected to some outlandishly inappropriate punishment was a stroke of luck we dare not count on in the future.”

Hermione had been nodding fiercely, “Yes, Professor. It will not happen again.”

McGonagall seemed satisfied and was dismissing her. Hermione was standing to leave as it hit her. “Professor Snape,” she blurted. “He knows about this too?”

“Of course he does,” McGonagall said, taking up her tea. “He will deal with it as he sees fit. Which, since it’s Draco, should not be too harsh. Off you go, Miss Granger.”

\----------------------------------

At the end of classes that day, nearly all of Gryffindor house was slumping back to the tower for a nap. Harry Potter was the exception, trudging toward Snape’s dungeon office instead, unprepared for another lesson in Occlumency.

It was utterly inconceivable that lessons with Snape could get any worse. That was what Harry was thinking up to the moment he opened the door to find Draco Malfoy already sitting in a chair in front of Snape’s desk.

Malfoy looked a little shaken, like he’d just had a fright. Hermione had warned him that Snape already knew they’d been late for curfew together the night before. He would have been more upset about it if he hadn’t realized a secret like that was bound to be revealed eventually while Snape challenged him with Legilimency in their lessons. 

“Don’t fret too much, Granger. He was probably going to have it rooted out of my memory by this afternoon anyway,” Draco had said as they stood together behind a tapestry earlier.

“So does this mean Bulgaria for you?” she had whispered to him.

Draco had sighed. “I don’t think so. I think Professor Snape has something he wants to gain by having me go home as a spy. He needs me for something he can’t do himself. I don’t think he’ll tell my parents. But he will be cross.”

Cross he was, raving over his desk at Draco about one more secret they had to keep the Dark Lord from finding out when they met in a few short weeks. “Not only will you be hiding your sympathies for the Order, but your infatuation with a Muggle-born girl.”

He didn’t even know about the secret of Ronald’s paternity. Draco kept quiet as the reprimand went on.

“Of all the careless, reckless -- “

This is what Snape had been saying just as Harry knocked at the door. It meant he was even less happy to see him than usual.

“Close the door, Potter,” he snapped.

Harry glared at Malfoy as he came in, feeling sicker the longer Malfoy stayed in his seat, looking like he did not expect to be dismissed.

“Sit down,” Snape said, summoning a chair so its legs scraped across the floor with a sound that made both boys wince. It came to a stop when it collided with Draco’s chair.

Harry shrank away from it as if it was cursed. “What’s he still doing here?”

Snape’s head snapped up. “You will call me -- “

“Sir,” Harry hurried. “What’s Malfoy doing here, sir?”

Snape stood up, swooping from behind his desk. “Somehow, Potter, the prospect of having your mind infiltrated by myself is not -- motivating enough for you. Accordingly, I have recruited Mr. Malfoy as a supplementary Occlumency partner for you.”

Harry sneered. “Malfoy doesn’t know Occlumency.”

Snape let his hand drop to Draco’s shoulder. “True. He does not. But he will. And he will master it before you -- unless,” he stepped away from Draco, “unless, Potter, you finally find the resolve to keep him out. Now sit.”

Harry fell angrily into the chair at Draco’s side, skidding sideways hard enough to separate them by almost a ruler’s length.

“Review for Mr. Malfoy the theory portion of our lessons, Potter. Tell him what the mind is not.”

Harry sighed noisily but said. “The mind is not a book. It is not text to be easily flipped through and read.”

This was exactly what Snape had taught Harry, but he looked faintly disgusted at the answer all the same. “What is a better comparison then?”

“I dunno, Sir.”

“Try, Potter. Reflect on your experiences. And look around this room, at the magical instruments here. There is one that is very like the form of memory in a mind.” Snape was bent over at the waist, his eyes level with where Harry’s would be if he could bear to look at him.

As Harry fumed and tried to force himself to think of an answer, Draco began to speak. “Sir, I see you have a Pensieve there,” he said. “It’s related to memory. Is it like memory as well?”

Snape stood upright, giving up on Harry. “Yes, Draco. Excellent. In a mind, memory is something like a Pensieve. It moves with currents, tides, floods, and ebbs. When we occlude our minds, we do not work to keep them closed, like some Muggle’s book. We seek to move the mind’s currents with purposeful, masterful dexterity against the invader. When an intruder comes, like a riptide through the mind, we calm the storm, divert the flow, or raise a storm of our own, one of such ferocity nothing can be seen or heard.”

Harry snorted. “Might’ve been nice if you’d told me the same before we started,” he muttered.

“Pay attention, Potter,” Snape said. “And get up.”

Both of the boys’ chairs flew backward, leaving them scrambling to find their feet. If they hadn’t been magically trained quidditch seekers, certainly they both would have fallen. 

“Now,” Snape said, nudging them to opposite sides of the room. “Potter, as you are more practiced in this art, you will attempt to storm into Draco’s mind. Draco, you will call upon the substantial gifts of your ancestors and resist -- “

Harry scoffed. “My family is gifted as well. Especially my Muggle-born mother. Or hadn’t you heard, Sir?”

“Which is precisely why your abject failure to learn Occlumency is so very shameful,” Snape finished.

Draco was stunned. He had seen Potter sassing Snape in class but this was beyond anything he’d witnessed between them. Whatever they’d been doing down here during these lessons, it had brought them out in full, unconcealed hatred for each other.

Snape was stepping out of the way, clearing a path between his students. “You may begin when ready, Potter, with the incantation “Legilimens.” Draco, there will be no need for you to speak. You may use your wand to deflect, not to destroy. Begin.”

It was like the dueling club from second year all over again. Harry scowled through the open space at Draco. His eyes were narrowed behind his glasses, just as they had been years ago. But Malfoy’s wand was held in front of himself instead of behind his head, as he used to hold it.

“Given up Daddy’s fighting stance?” Harry sneered at him.

“Quit stalling Potter. What’s wrong? Can’t perform without an audience to show off for, just like your own Daddy? Not that you’d know firsthand.” 

Harry bared his teeth and shouted. “Legilimens.”

The impact was indeed like a wave, but not a wave of water -- more like light, or the electricity that ran through the Grangers’ walls. It was powered by rage, pain, and Draco felt tugging at the moorings of his memories. They were spilling out. Up came Snape, scolding him in the office before Harry arrived. And then there was Hermione, on top of him in the vanished room. It was an image not only of what she looked like, shadowy and hovering over him, but the way she made him feel.

Draco’s own rage responded to the invasion of what was sacred to him. It came as a wave of his own, massive and roaring through his mind, capsizing Harry’s invasion like a tiny rowboat. Or so it felt. The truth was that Harry was withdrawing on his own, out of respect for Hermione’s privacy.

Their senses returned at the same time, each of the boys shocked to find themselves back in Snape’s office, still on their feet, sweating and panting, still on opposite sides of the room, their wands unused.

“You can’t show him that!” Harry growled at Draco.

“He already knows!” he snarled back.

Harry snickered. “Of course he does, you weakling. Substantial gifts of your ancestors, my arse. You’re rubbish!”

Draco gripped his wand, holding it in front of himself like a knife, about to slash. “Shut up and come again!”

The wave rose over Draco once more. He was less startled this time, able to stay afloat, to divert it, using his will to let something harmless bob up, flowing over Potter’s invading craft. It was an early memory. In it, Draco was standing on the lawn of Malfoy manor, watching the sky. 

Potter dived into the current, looking for pain or grief in the memory. He found it. In the sky above, just returned from the chaos of visit to the Weasleys was Ronald, six years old and flying a broom even though Narcissa had told them they couldn’t have lessons for another year. He was brilliant at it. Draco felt worthless, stupid, ashamed. And Lucius was not angry at Ronald for flying, but cheering as the little ginger cherub swept by overhead.

As Potter watched, Draco sensed his enjoyment of it, the hungry angry attack loosening into malicious mirth. He took the chance to send a current crashing into Potter’s weakness, and he was gone.

“Excellent,” Snape was saying as the boys came to themselves. “What did you see, Potter?”

He wiped his forehead against his sleeve. “A bunch of stupid jealous baby nonsense about brooms.”

Snape gave a sharp nod. “Very good, Draco. Diversion is an advanced technique,” he said, not offering Harry any praise at all. “Now, switch positions.”

Harry was sneering again. “What, now that I’m exhausted I have to keep him out?”

“He is also fatigued, Potter. It’s hardly unfair. And even if it was, you would be a fool to imagine the Dark Lord plays fair.”

Harry shrugged. “He demanded that I pick up my wand before attacking me in the graveyard last year. You might be surprised.”

“I would not be,” Snape hissed. “Switch positions. As Potter already knows, Draco, eye contact can be vital.”

They stared at each other for a moment, but the eye contact felt like another diversion -- like they were hanging in the air over a quidditch pitch considering fooling each other with a feint. There was a strange eagerness in Harry’s look, as if he had a plan, perhaps a trap.

Draco struck anyway. “Legilimens.”

Draco’s magic washed over Harry. For a moment Harry flailed in it, as if drowning, as he did every time he attempted Occlumency. But Draco was not Snape. He was strong, maybe talented, but not skilled. Through Draco’s aggression, Harry was able to see something afar off. Perhaps it was because he’d just taunted Snape with it, but the memory of the graveyard where Voldemort took on human form was near enough for him to send it rushing over Draco’s invading presence. 

It was a devastating memory and it sunk Draco low. Harry did nothing to interfere as Draco heard the command and saw Cedric die. He saw Wormtail sacrifice his own hand. He saw the Dark Lord rise. Harry knew what was coming next, and instead of fighting to storm Draco out, he plunged him deeper into the current. 

As if with his own eyes, as if he was there, Draco beheld the scene in sharp detail, as Voldemort stood over Cedric Diggory’s body, summoned the Death Eaters, and unmasked Lucius Malfoy.


	26. Twenty-six

In his dungeon office, Severus Snape stood aghast between two students, both of them sprawled on opposite sides of the stone floor. The first was Draco Malfoy, wandless after hurling his into a shelf crammed with bottles, shattering several, their contents splattered on the wood, smoking and fizzing. Draco didn’t see or hear it, his eyes clenched shut, his voice a tearless sob. 

The other student was Harry Potter, rolling on his back with laughter. The sound chilled Snape. The laughter did not sound like Potter. It did not sound like any young person. It hardly sounded like a person at all. It sounded like -- no it couldn’t be.

Frantic to end it, Snape swooped at him, grasping Harry by the front of his robes, pulling him to standing, both of them shaking. “Potter!” he called out. “Stop that at once. Open your eyes. Potter. Harry Potter!”

The infernal laughing had almost completely faded. Harry was coming back, as if out of a stupor, mumbling as Snape held him upright.

In the new quiet, the door to Snape’s office clicked closed. Draco had retrieved his wand and was letting himself out. 

Snape swore and dropped Harry into a chair. “What was it, Potter?” he snarled. “What did Draco see? Tell me or I shall find it in your mind myself.”

Harry looked exhausted, perhaps spooked, but not sorry. “I’d just been talking about it, so it was right there when he rushed in. Maybe you should have expected this, Sir.”

“What was it?” Snape’s voice was loud, furious, but somehow, Harry wasn’t afraid in the least.

He answered simply, “It was the graveyard, last year, at the final task of the tournament.”

Snape’s eyes widened. “How much did he see?”

The strange coldness that had seized Harry was ebbing away, leaving him unsettled. He swallowed as he said, “He saw Cedric get attacked, and Voldemort return…”

Snape stepped closer. “Yes, and did he see the others?”

The others -- Harry knew who he meant. Snape didn’t care about Draco seeing any of the Death Eaters Voldemort summoned to the graveyard but one. He nodded. Yes, Draco had seen his father groveling for mercy from the Dark Lord.

Snape sniffed, "And yourself. Were you quite yourself during the exercise, or did you feel -- overtaken?"

"What do you mean, Sir?"

"The laughter."

Harry knew it was strange, and dangerous to talk about sharing Voldemort’s feelings to someone he did not trust. He would wait to talk to Ronald and Hermione about it later -- maybe Sirius. For now, he merely squirmed as he asked. "What about it?"

"Did it spring from your own anger, your own useless hatred of your classmate?" Snape asked. "Or was it from -- him?"

Harry's mouth opened, but he didn't answer.

Snape threw both his hands up. "For stars' sake, Potter, practice between our lessons. If slips like this don’t convince you that nothing is more important than your study of Occlumency, then I don’t know what would. Should you mistake anything as more important -- any other classes, infatuations, illicit clubs, anything -- I will see that they are taken out of your way.” 

Summoning Harry's book bag, Snape sent it crashing into the boy’s stomach. “Now get out.”

—---—------------

Snape found Draco in the courtyard, sitting in the cold without a cloak, the pale flesh around his lips darkening to blue. “Come inside, Draco,” he said. “I will answer your questions as best I can indoors. Your mother will not like to hear that you’re suffering needlessly with cold.”

Draco did not move, except for to shiver. “He was there with Potter, in that graveyard -- Dad was. I already knew the Dark Lord was back. You were there yourself when he told me. But Dad was there the night it happened, standing in the circle. I saw his face there. I heard his voice.”

Snape dropped to sit close to him on the cold stone bench along a leafless, late winter hedge. “Understand, Draco, that he couldn’t refuse to come without putting his life in danger. Through the mark in his arm, the call is irresistible.”

Draco’s head drooped to look at Snape’s left arm, hidden in his sleeves. “You’re marked and you weren’t there. I would have seen you.”

He folded his arms as if to hide them. “I couldn’t have left the school during the tournament. The Dark Lord knew this and excused me. He must often make such allowances. His power to oversee us, divine our movements, our intentions, our desires, is not perfect, but it is knowing enough to be fearsome. It is why you must be trained before you meet him.”

Draco’s voice was rising. “Is it? You mean to say your Dark Lord knows what all of you mean? What you want? Then I can’t wait to meet him. Maybe he can tell me what my father is truly thinking -- who he is.”

Snape closed an arm around Draco’s shoulders, hushing him. “My boy, your father made momentous, irrevocable decisions as a very young person which he could not have possibly understood at the time. As did I. As did most everyone in those times. He is now dealing with the consequences of those choices while trying to insulate his loved ones from them.”

Draco scoffed. “Loved ones. Mother wasn’t in the graveyard with him. There was a place for her sister, but not for Mother. How can she love him, after everything he’s -- all the -- and with Ronald and his -- “

Snape shushed him again. “She does love him, deeply and truly. And you may too, Draco. It’s alright for you to continue loving your father.”

Draco was sobbing now, not ready to talk about himself, keeping with the subject of his mother. “How can she love him? Someone as good and true as her...”

Snape’s hand grasped the back of Draco’s skull, pushing the boy’s face against Snape’s shoulder. It felt like long ago, when Draco would flee into the garden after getting overexcited and needing to be scolded at manor events. He was never punished harshly, but he always took it too much to heart. Snape would catch Narcissa’s eye, wait for her nod, and follow Draco to comfort him, like this. 

“Do not lionize your mother, Draco,” he told him now. “She is not a saint but a flawed, complex person like any other. You do her a disservice when you deny her that humanity.”

“No, she can’t love him. I don’t know how…” He trailed off into more sobs against Snape’s shoulder.

Snape sighed. He had a personal conviction to always tell students the truth, and he kept to it even now, even with this boy. “She does love him. Not because she doesn’t understand him, but because she does understand him. She cannot trust him, but she can love him. And so can you.”

Draco coughed in new pain. “If she can’t trust him, who can she trust? Does it have to be me? Already?“

In spite of his own pain, Draco sensed Snape’s posture growing rigid at his question. He pushed himself free from Snape’s hold, looking into his face. He blinked, his eyes clearing. “It’s you,” he said. “Mother trusts you. She loves Dad, but she trusts you.”

Snape’s head dipped in a single nod. “Yes. And the inverse of that is that she can’t trust your father, and she can’t love me. Not in the way you fear, Draco. Put it out of your mind.”

Draco blinked. “You’re all the same, aren’t you? Tell me. How did Molly Weasley fall pregnant with Ronald?”

Snape dropped his arm from Draco’s shoulders, sneering. “I assure you, I was not party to that.”

“But you know,” Draco pressed. “A potioneer like yourself. Of course you know. Even we know, Ronald and I.”

Snape’s eyes narrowed, still disbelieving.

“You’ll find out all my secrets as the Occlumency lessons go on,” Draco said, wiping his face. “I might as well tell you now. We brewed a paternity potion in Granger’s basement over the holidays. I nicked what I needed from the greenhouses and from your classroom. Dad is Ronald’s literal father, and Mrs. Weasley -- he loves her, at least a little, or else -- “

Snape was on his feet, pacing the gravel path in front of the bench. “Molly Weasley is your father’s old friend from school -- “

“Oh, like yourself and Potter’s dead mum?”

“No, not at all like that!” Snape roared.

Draco startled, leaning away from where Snape stood over him, until the hedge crunched against his back.

Snape was recovering his composure. “Molly Weasley’s connection to your father is nothing like a love affair -- not like the one he has built his life around with your mother. And I warn you, Draco, do not judge the rashness of our youth when you did not live in those times yourself. We all did what we thought we had to in order to survive, and to bring your generation into the world.”

Draco was now standing as well, eye to eye with Snape. “We, Sir?” he said. “Did you say we?”

Snape spun away, breaking their eye contact.

“If you think I could resist trying the paternity potion myself, you’re mistaken,” Draco said. “I know who my father is. But I think I know why you’ve always been in my life, propping me up even through my mistakes, following me into cold courtyards, soaking up my tears.”

Snape had moved several paces away, standing with his arms folded over his chest, his chin held high, his eyelids low. He made no answer.

Draco stepped forward to bring them face to face again. “You aren’t my father, Sir. But you could have been. Maybe you should have been.”

\--------------------------------------

Hermione came into the vanished room, answering Draco's call on her galleon, calling out questions of her own.

“I’ve just seen Harry. What was Snape thinking? Doubling up your lessons?” she said. “No warning, no nothing. I don’t know how he could’ve expected anything less than a disaster, going about it that way. Harry is so upset, he refused to come along with me to work it out.”

Draco dragged her into an embrace more roughly than he intended, silencing her ranting, bowing his face into her hair. “He’s not the only one. I didn’t want to see him. I only wanted you.” His voice cut off raggedly, as if choked.

“Malfoy?” she said.

His answer was to hold her even closer, lifting her feet off the ground. She grasped the sides of his head, tipping it to an angle at which she could try to read his face. “What happened in the Occlumency lesson? What did Harry let you see? He wouldn’t tell me.”

Draco shuddered at the memory of it. “I need your help."

Her eyes were wide, scanning his face. She was nodding. “Yes, tell me how.”

“When we’re finished here, find Ronald and tell him what I’m about to tell you. I’ve barely got my feelings under control myself, and telling Ronald would mean reliving it all, watching him hear it for the first time. So I'm being a coward and asking you to do it instead. I'm sorry, but -- ”

She boosted herself onto tiptoe and kissed his mouth. “Stop. Just tell me what you saw.”

They sat on the table in the centre of the room, Draco on the edge, with his feet on the floor, and Hermione beside him, her legs folded beneath her, facing his profile as he spoke. In much the same words he used to speak to Snape about it, Draco told her about Harry’s memory. 

“Crashing through Potter’s mind, seeing his past -- it was like standing beside him, almost as his other self. I could hear my father’s voice in the graveyard. I could see his face when the Dark Lord unmasked him. He was frightened, but otherwise, he looked like he always does. He looked like me -- someone who wasn’t Potter’s other self, but my other self.”

Hermione rose to her knees on the table, her arms around Draco’s neck. “You were not there. You were here with all of us, heckling Harry and fully expecting every one of the champions to make it back safely. Nothing that happened in the graveyard that night had anything to do with you.”

He was shaking his head above the ring of her arms. “How could I not have seen it coming? I let it happen.”

“Draco you were fifteen. You were away from home, at school.” Hermione shook him, as if trying to clear his head herself. Her voice was loud, taking on a tone that never failed to provoke him to argue.

The volume of his voice rose to match hers, but he wouldn’t look at her, his eyes fixed straight ahead. “By then, I already knew who started the riot at the Quidditch World Cup at the beginning of the year. I knew before it happened. He was one of them, my father.”

“And he was acting on awful promises he made before any of us was born.”

“While I did nothing to stop him -- nothing to show him I knew he was wrong,” he was speaking as if pained, words coming between heaving breaths. “Granger, while you ran for cover, hand in hand with Ronald and Potter, I stood and watched the riot. It may as well have been me behind my father’s mask -- ”

She'd had enough. Still holding his neck and shoulders, Hermione swung one knee around Draco’s waist. She straddled him as he sat on the table, one knee on either side of his hips, her feet behind her. In danger of falling backward off of him, onto the floor, she clung to him with her arms, holding tightly with her hands and thighs. 

“Granger, what -- “

Her chest crushed against his, she kissed him, hard, her mouth open, tongue driving at him. Words sounded in his throat but not further. He was speechless as, for the first time ever, her pelvis bore down on him, the warm crux at the centre of her pushing against the front of his trousers. 

He gasped, pushing himself back, against the table, trying to retreat to his gentlemanly ways. But at the same time, his hands came up to grab her, one on each side of her rib cage. Perhaps it was just to keep her from falling. She didn’t ask, but rushed into his hold, using his momentum as he tried to pull his lower body away from her to undermine his balance. With a grunt, he fell onto his back on the tabletop. 

She fell with him, her kiss unrelenting, chasing down his puzzled attempts to say something, to question her. At every sound, every turn, she deepened the connection. She was in control now, no longer in danger of falling, her hands free to roam through his hair, over his shoulders, across his chest, down his sides, tugging at the fabric of his shirt.

It was too much. She knew it. But she had advanced on him like this as a demonstration, a chance for him to distinguish himself from his father, and prove his respect for her, his trustworthiness, maybe even something as archaic and indefinable as his honour. He had to know their relationship wasn’t ready for this, and someone had to stop it, even if, at his core, he wanted it, and she’d lost herself to it. 

She hadn’t, really, but she’d created a dangerous situation all the same. Try as she might, Hermione could never plan for everything, including the intensity of her reactions to being this closely and powerfully connected to his body. Her desire for him was immense, real, a high, aching tension she could barely stand. Her body had a secret, ancient script that she’d never seen until now, and she was shocked to find she already knew it by heart. 

She wanted her hands inside his clothes, sliding along his skin, but her mind knew how to tell her hands to wait. Her mind did not know how to speak to the baser parts of herself. They followed the ancient script, surprising her as she felt herself move against him in a way she had neither learned nor intended. Just once, she arched her spine, then released it, causing friction, low, not too insistently, but enough for her to sense a twitch answering back from him.

Draco tore his mouth away from hers, his voice calling between them. “No, you don’t have to do that, Granger. Not yet.” 

She hovered over him, her breath panting against his flushed cheek. She swallowed, willing her body to fold up the script, be satisfied with her demonstration, let him escape. She was nearly limp as Draco rolled onto his side, shifting her off of him to lay on the table beside him. With their contact broken, he lay back, his heart pounding, his arm dropped over both of his eyes.

Her breath was still fast and shallow but she managed to speak. “Do you see, Malfoy? You are not your father. You are kind, respectful of Muggle-borns like me, not willing to use and mistreat us. You are in control of yourself, not greedy or selfish.“

He laughed. “Stars, Granger, is that what you were trying to say with all of that?”

She breathed out a laugh. “Persuasive, yeah?”

He laughed again. “That was one hell of an object lesson. And,” he said rolling onto his side to face her again, smirking, “one hell of a risk. What if I hadn’t stopped it?”

She shrugged. “I trusted that you would.” She poked his chest. “And I was right. That’s how reliable you are.”

He caught her poking finger, closed his hand around it and lifted her hand to his face to kiss it. “Don’t do that every time I come unhinged. Sooner or later, the ending will be different.”

The blush that had been fading from her skin returned as she said, “Yes, that’s how I expect things to go.”

He cleared his throat, sitting up, tugging on her hand to bring her to sit as well.

She grinned at him. “You must be convinced by now. Accept it. You are Draco Malfoy the pure, the trustworthy, the paragon of respect and equality.”

Before he could answer, a third voice was sounding in the room. “Respect and equality? Playing pretend, are you Malfoy?”

Hermione stood as if at attention beside the table, smoothing her skirt and jamming her feet back into the shoes that had fallen off her feet when she jumped Draco.

“Harry,” she announced as he came into the room just ahead of Ronald. “Look, don’t you come in here unless you’re going to play nicely.”

“Ah, Mother Granger is back on the scene,” Draco drawled. “I’m immune to her, but stars help the two of you.”

“You have to be nice as well, Malfoy,” she said.

“I’m nice,” Ronald muttered to himself.

“Yes, you are. Thank you,” Hermione said. 

Draco rolled his eyes, irked more by this bit of praise than all the hand-holding he’d seen them do this term. 

“Now listen,” Hermione went on. I think I’ve figured something out about -- about the laugh. The one Harry was doing at the end of the lesson today.”

All three of the boys shuddered at once.

“You told them about the laugh, did you Potter? Delightful.” Draco frowned, remembering.

“I’d already heard him do it myself,” Ronald said. “in our room, especially at night. Harry feels You-know-who’s emotions sometimes. It doesn't have to be a proper vision, or even when he's asleep. Sometimes Harry will just feel like him. Isn’t that right, Harry? Especially when You-know-who is glad about something, like he must have been during the lesson today.”

“Glad,” Draco echoed. “What would he be glad about here?"

“That’s what I was wondering too,” Hermione said. “I think he was pleased that Harry was letting himself lash out at someone. It only makes sense that when he’s feeling hatred, Harry is more vulnerable to Voldemort's emotions. Which means,” she said, rounding on him, “that you have got to be careful, and think the best of people, forgive them and -- and everything.”

Ronald was scoffing now. “Harry’s got to give up anger? Even for Snape and Draco?”

She looked at the floor as she took Draco’s hand. “Maybe especially for them. Maybe that’s what Dumbledore is trying to get Snape to teach Harry along with Occlumency -- how to forgive, purify his heart of hate, or some such thing. And I’m not just saying that because a friendship between Harry and Malfoy would make my life easier, not to mention yours, Ronald. The truth is, the bad feelings between Harry and Malfoy are among the most disruptive forces in the school right now. That has to change.”

"I’ve given up guessing at what Dumbledore is trying to teach me,” Harry said. “If he cared so much, if it was really so important, he’d just tell me." 

“Harry -- “

“No, when you want someone to know something, you just tell them. Or,” he said, glancing at Draco, “or you show them. That’s what I meant to do today, Malfoy. I know it was awful and I admit that, at the time, I was enjoying watching you suffer through it far too much. But you had to know. I’d already heard you going off about protecting your family. And you can’t begin to do that until you know how deep they're in with Voldemort.”

Ronald jumped. “What’s this?"

Harry and Draco exchanged a weary look. Draco took a deep breath. "Potter’s memory, Ronald. It was bad. Hermione’s going to tell you about it. I’m too exhausted. Once you hear it, you can judge for yourself if our family’s worth protecting."

Ronald’s face blanched so alarmingly, Harry was struck with a pang of compassion. "I wasn't questioning their worth. All I was trying to do was warn you. If your father is forced to decide between Voldemort and you -- you can’t assume he’ll choose you."

Draco heaved another sigh. "Well, we’ll never know unless we give him the chance to show us. Isn’t that right, Potter? So the next Hogsmeade trip, off I go, back home to whatever’s there."

Harry narrowed his mouth, nodding grimly, feeling suddenly foolish about his plans to be dating Cho Chang that day. “Snape agrees?” he asked.

Draco nodded. “Yes.”

By then, Ronald had wound himself up enough to look like he might be sick. 

Hermione saw it and pulled Draco to standing and pushed him toward the door. “Enough,” she said. “I need to talk to Ronald before the pair of you come up with any more scary, gloomy, mysterious things to say.”

Harry nodded, walking backward toward the door. “Ronald,” he said. “You’ll be okay.”

\-----------------------------

Ronald had always sensed there was something particularly awful about the night Cedric Diggory had died, something Harry was keeping from him. His worst fear had been that it involved his parents. And while he was relieved to hear Narcissa had no part in the events of that night, learning Lucius was there struck him like a physical blow. He doubled over, his hands on his stomach.

“Ronald, I’m sorry,” Hermione said, holding him, nudging him upright against her body. “Say something, Ronald. Take a breath. Anything.”

Breath -- yes, he needed to breathe. Ronald blinked his blue eyes -- Lucius’s eyes -- and sucked in a chestful of air. As he exhaled, he leaned into Hermione, her feet scrambling to brace themselves beneath his weight.

“Ronald -- “

Still struggling to keep him upright, Hermione peered around him. She thought she’d heard footsteps clipping toward them and she was right. There was Pansy, slipping her head and shoulders under Ronald’s arm, coming face to face with Hermione.

“What’s happened?” she was saying. “Draco told me to come. Said there was bad news.”

At the sound of her voice, Ronald pivoted away from Hermione, lunging toward Pansy instead. Hermione leaned into her ear, whispering something about Death Eaters at the tournament and Lucius Malfoy -- something Pansy had already assumed must be true. Her parents weren’t Death Eaters, but pure-blood gossip ran deep, assuring secret orders were never too secret. She had never mentioned what she’d heard about their father to Ronald or Draco, perhaps because she assumed they must have known.

“Poor lovely, dim, trusting boys,” she crooned as she waved Hermione away. “Thanks, Granger. I’ve got him.”

As Hermione let go of him, Ronald clamped both his arms around Pansy, rocking them back and forth.

Pansy turned her face to breathe. “Ron?” she pressed. “Ron, speak to me.”

“Home, Pansy love,” his voice rumbled miserably above her. “I need to go home.”

She tangled her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck, raising her head to place a kiss in the hollow of his throat. “Sweet boy, you know you can’t do that. Not right now.”

He bowed to groan against her neck.

She smoothed her hands up and down his back. “We’re both here. Let’s make this room our home for now, yeah? I’ll build a fire, hold your head in my lap until you fall asleep. We’ll stay here together as long as you like.”

He straightened up. “I’d love that. But what I mean is, I need to go see my mother -- my literal mother, Molly Weasley.”

Pansy frowned. “You do?”

Ronald nodded. “Yeah. I don’t know how else to get the ground back beneath my feet. I mean, in these past weeks, I found my father, my brilliant, beautiful father. And then, just as quick, I feel like I lost him.”

Her heart was breaking right along with his. She was kissing his cheeks. “You’re not lost. You’re here with me. We’ll sort it out. I promise.”

He held her face between his hands, looking hard into her dark eyes. His face was a thousand questions, and it hurt her that she could answer none of them. It wouldn’t do. 

“Ron,” she said. “We’ll go to her. On the Hogsmeade weekend, while Draco sneaks off to the manor, we’ll Floo to Weasleys’ from the Hog’s Head inn. I’ll take you. And even if it goes wrong, we’ll be together.”


	27. Twenty-seven

It looked like rain.

Everyone crowded at the doors of the Entrance Hall to sign out, Filch taking his time, savouring this brush with power. If he dragged it out long enough, the Hogwarts student body might not make it to Hogsmeade before the clouds opened to soak them.

In the centre of the mass of people, Harry stood happily but sheepishly next to Cho Chang, hoping to settle comfortably into the first Valentine’s date of his life before he died of awkwardness. Still, he was not so wrapped up in his feelings that he didn’t glance over his shoulder, to the back of the group, where the Malfoy brothers stood whispering intently to each other.

“You’ll come right back here as soon as your feet hit the fireplace grate if HE is there,” Ronald said. “Promise me, Draco.”

“I’m in no position to promise anything,” he answered. “I have to take it as it comes.”

Ronald paced back and forth in front of him. “I hate that. I’m coming with you.”

“You’re not,” Hermione interjected just as Pansy took him by the arm with both hands, ending his pacing, keeping him at her side. “Your brother has been training with Snape for weeks to prepare himself for this. You can’t just walk in there as you are and ruin the entire operation.”

“Especially not when you’ve got your own part to play today,” Pansy was saying. “This is your best chance to get to the Weasleys to find out about the -- “ She couldn’t bring herself to say “the weapon.” It sounded too stupid. She wasn’t used to all this high stakes, do-gooder nonsense yet.

“Exactly,” Hermione agreed. “Mr. Weasley was willing to risk his life to guard it at the ministry, so he must know something.”

Ronald had stopped pacing, but he still stood in the Entrance Hall with his eyes clenched closed and his face upturned to the ceiling. His feelings were a tangle. He was worried about Draco going home, but also faintly jealous of him for getting to be there again after so long.

“And,” Pansy reminded him, “it’s not like there’s no one at the manor to look out for Draco.”

“It’s true, Mum and Dad will be there,” Draco said, hoping he was right. “And I’ll be going through Snape’s fire. He’ll be waiting, watching too, if he can.”

Ronald opened his eyes and stared hard at his brother, still not speaking.

“What?” Draco said. “Just go on your way.”

Ronald let out his breath with a single nod. 

Pansy threaded her arm through his. “Oh, by the way, Granger,” she said, “the fake dating is off. Snape knows it was all an act now, so what’s the point?”

Hermione gasped. “Parkinson, you can’t just -- “

“Sure I can,” she said. “If you don’t want anyone to know about you and Draco, that’s whatever. Tell everyone you’re single if you want. I don’t care. But you’re not the one with Ron anymore. That’s me.”

In spite of her unilateral ending of the fake dating, Pansy sprung forward and pecked a kiss on Draco’s cheek. “Bye, Draco. You’ll be brilliant, I’m sure. No one better.”

He nodded his thanks.

“Right,” Ronald said, clapping a hand over his brother’s shoulder. “Take care of yourself. Give my love to Mum.”

Hermione and Draco watched Pansy tug Ronald toward the end of the queue which Filch was finally, grudgingly allowing to move forward. The room was emptying, growing quieter as she and Draco stood facing each other, both of them dressed in weekend traveling clothes. She hadn’t cried since the night Harry told her Snape had agreed to send Draco home, and she was resolved to keep it that way.

“Do we,” she began, “do we just say goodbye now -- here?”

Draco scanned the large, open space, still teeming with students and teachers.

“I mean,” Hermione went on, “it’s not impossible that this is, well, the last -- um…”

Draco tried to smirk off the heaviness of their parting. “Walk me to Snape’s stairwell. But don’t look like you’re walking me.”

She let him get several paces ahead before she moved as if to go into the Great Hall before curving toward the entrance to Snape’s dungeon. As she stepped down into the shadowy stairwell, Draco caught her in his arms, her feet suspended above the tread of the stone step below them. For a moment, it felt like she was falling and she let out a small, high yelp.

“Hush, you,” he laughed, low and quiet as he held her face-to-face. “After five years with Potter, how are you still so bad at being sneaky?”

“I’m not.” Her protest was weak, her arms closing around him, her face hidden against his neck.

He twisted in a half-circle, back and forth, a soothing motion. Her feet drifted out, almost kicking the wall. “You are a terrible sneak," he insisted. "There’s another reason I’m glad you’re not coming with me. Noisy little -- “ Draco left off teasing her when he felt her convulse in his arms. “Granger?”

She clung to him more tightly, her face still hidden. She blinked against his throat, dragging her warm, wet eyelashes across his skin. Her run of days without crying had ended. 

He kissed the side of her head, the only part of her he could reach while they held each other like this. “Hermione,” he whispered. “It’s alright.”

Her body shook with more tears. 

There was, of course, no way for him to know if anything about his trip home would be alright. Instead he tried, “Don’t be too sad. It has to be this way. We"ve already agreed. You’d do the same if you were me. Wouldn’t you?”

She nodded.

“Right. So try not to cry -- “

“Of course I’m trying not to cry,” she said, lifting her face, kicking her feet behind her. 

He was smirking at her again. “There’s my girl.”

She let her forehead fall against his. “Show off for me. Show me Legilimency. Before you go, show me what you learned. Do it to me.”

He set her feet down on the step. “No, Granger. Not that. It’s not nice. It’s awful.”

“Only if it’s between you and Harry -- “

“No, that’s not it,” he said. “Everything about Legilimency is an intrusion. It’s not sweet or romantic or anything like that. And it's not Potter. Snape has been like a second father to me my whole life, and even when he does it, I get so angry I want to hex him into next Samhain. I don’t ever want you to feel that for me -- like I’m invading you -- “

“You have my permission -- “

“I said no, Granger. You can’t consent to that. Legilimency is an attack. Always. That’s what it’s for. That’s all it’s for.”

She sighed and wiped her face on his chest. “Fine.”

“Trust me, I’m way better at Occlumency than Potter is. That’s what Snape says. It will be alright.” His fingers found her chin, tucked against his sternum. He lifted her face to look at his. “And also unlike Potter, I believe my parents will still find a way to protect me and send me back if things get too dangerous. You’ve seen it happen before yourself, when they got Ronald and me out of your parents’ house at Christmas. They’ll help me. Even if it means…” 

The words faded before he could finish them. The awful fact was, he was putting his parents in danger by going home. But their standing up to the Dark Lord was long overdue. It would be better if they could resolve to do it for reasons of their own conscience, but if not, they could begin by doing it for him.

He was lost in these thoughts as she took to the step above him, her face closer to his. “Please be careful. I want to see you again,” she said, and she kissed him, her hand on the nape of his neck, thumb behind his ear, smoothing his hair. He stepped into her, hands in the small of her back, pulling her closer. 

Without her robes, his fingers made unintended contact with the bare skin beneath the hem of her short Muggle coat and jumper. The heat and texture of her jolted through his fingers. She jumped against him, higher and closer. There was so much of her he'd never touched, and if it was all as sweet as this tiny area, brushed with his fingers… It was all he could do not to plunge his arm inside her clothes, up the length of her spine as she arched into him.

“Mr. Malfoy.”

It was Snape, speaking coldly, formally, scornfully to him from the open door at the bottom of the stairs. “This way, if you please.”

\--------------------------------------------------

Ronald watched wistfully as Harry followed Cho Chang into Madam Puddifoot’s Tea House on the Hogsmeade high street. “Never thought I’d envy a bloke going in there,” he said. “But it’s better than being off to confront the woman who lied to me my whole life about who’s my Dad.”

Pansy made no reply. It was slightly terrifying.

Ronald was sputtering his own reply. “Not that I mean to say I wouldn’t take you to Puddifoot’s. I would. If you wanted me to.”

She frowned. “Nah, it’s a bit tacky for me. And being seen in there is just for showing off. No need for that when everyone from school is already looking at you and me today.”

He took her by both hands and moved to stand in front of her. “You’re satisfied? With just this?” he lifted their hands between them, kissing the impossibly smooth divots between her knuckles. “For Valentine’s Day?”

She tried to scoff. “Satisfied for now, I suppose. You must understand, Ron, that by starting up with me while actually liking another girl, and then by upgrading to only pretending to like her, you’ve set the bar incredibly low.”

He groaned. “Sorry. It’ll be high from now on. Like, you want me to snog you right here? In front of the whole town? Because I’ll kiss you anywhere.” He flicked his eyes from her feet to the top of her head, taking all of her in, “And I mean anywhere.”

She punched at his chest. “Lovely sentiment. But for now, let’s just get in before it rains.”

They set off down the street at a trot, making for the Hogs Head Inn. It was every bit as empty and scruffy as it had been the day Ronald had gone there with Harry and Hermione to organize the DA. No one questioned them as they approached the fireplace.

“It’s called The Burrow,” Ronald told her as he took a handful of Floo powder.

She looked puzzled. “Is it underground?”

“No, it’s more like a tower, actually.”

“That makes no sense.”

With a smoking flash, Ronald was standing in the Burrow’s kitchen. It was odd to be there without the smell of a lot of cooking and baking going on, but no one had known to expect him. It wasn’t a big family holiday. This was what the Burrow was really like. Not a party, just a place. 

There was sound and movement from the clock on the wall. The hand with Ronald’s name on it was clicking as it shifted from “School” to “Traveling.” Never once had he seen it point to “Home.” 

He was still staring at it when Pansy came flaming into the room, bouncing into his back They were dusting each other off as Molly appeared. She came into the kitchen expecting the unannounced visitors with Floo clearance to be from among her children, but not this one. 

Her tone was cross, her head down. “So the pair of you are finally over apparating every time you leave a room, are you? Humble enough to use the Floo network again?” She must have assumed Fred and George had arrived -- two flares at the fireplace, on the day she knew they’d been turned loose from school to go to Hogsmeade. 

She stopped, gasping a little at the sight of Ronald and a pretty girl who wasn’t Hermione Granger standing in the kitchen. She sang out a greeting and took his face in both her hands, kissing his forehead. 

“Hope you don’t mind,” he was saying.

“No, no, of course not. This is your home too.” She turned to Pansy, smiling a little less genuinely.

“This is Pansy Parkinson,” he said. “Pansy this is my -- Molly. Mrs. Weasley, that is.” He turned back to Molly. “We’ve come to see Arthur’s collection of Muggle artefacts. Hoping he could give us a tour.”

“Yes, for a school project. Muggle studies,” Pansy piped up. “The library at school is terribly out of date when it comes to Muggles. Nothing but books on butter churns and phonographs.”

“Is it really?” Arthur had stepped into the kitchen. “Typical. Greetings, Ronald. And your friend -- Parkinson, was it? You wouldn’t be Prender Parkinson’s daughter would you?”

Pansy cast a worried sideways glance at Ronald. “Yes.”

“Prender Parkinson’s daughter here asking about Muggle artefacts?” Arthur grinned. “Well, will wonders never cease?”

“Yes, yes, follow Arthur out to his workshop, dears. I’ll get us some tea,” Molly was saying, her hand on Ronald’s back, nudging him along, always so pleased when he and Arthur took an interest in one another.

“Wait, Mum,” Ronald said. “Before all of that, I’d like a word. Pansy can get started with Arthur. I’ll be right there.”

All at once, Molly knew. Coming here when the house was empty, bringing along a failsafe distraction for Arthur, the scared, sad look in Ronald’s eyes -- she knew why he had come here. The colour drained out of her face, the rosiness of her cheeks gone. 

Ronald worried she might faint and stepped forward to take her arm.

Arthur stopped in the doorway. “Molly, dear?”

“It’s alright, Arthur," she said, flexing her fingers on Ronald’s sleeve, on the fabric of the fine coat Narcissa Malfoy had bought for him. “I’ll send him out when we’re through.”

They left as Ronald pulled out a kitchen chair and eased Molly into it. He sat close, her hand still grasping his arm. 

“I don’t know how to start,” he said. “You’ve always been so good to me. Arthur too. I’m grateful. But over the holidays, Draco, Hermione and I -- we brewed a paternity potion and -- and …” 

He couldn’t bring himself to finish, but he knew he wouldn’t have to. And anyways, Molly was the adult, she’d made this mess. Let her speak to it first.

Her head hung low, not looking at him. “So it’s settled, is it?” She drew in a huge breath, making her taller than he was used to. “What we’re about to talk about, I always knew it was an inevitable conversation. But I assumed it would come later in your life.”

She looked up long enough to offer him a melancholy smile. “I underestimated you, Ronald. I thought it wouldn’t be until you became a father yourself, and held a perfect, helpless, beautiful baby in your arms, that you’d realize…” She stopped, tugging a handkerchief from inside her sleeve, dabbing at her eyes. “That you’d realize there is no way I could have let you go from this family where you would have been perfectly happy, and given you up, my darling baby, to -- “ her breath hitched with the leading edge of a sob, “to anyone except your own father.”

She bowed over her lap, weeping almost soundlessly into her handkerchief, as if trying to keep Arthur from hearing. “Of course Lucius Malfoy is your father. All of wizarding Britain thinks I’m a monster for handing over a surplus son to punish the Malfoys. The truth is it was a tremendous sacrifice, even though it was me who suggested Dumbledore petition the Wizengamot for it. I wanted the war over, permanently.”

She sat up, but still wouldn’t look at him. “I stood to lose so much if war ever came again. I wanted the Death Eaters properly reformed, changed for the better, not just shuffled off to a hellish island to be tortured. I wasn’t wrong about that. Just look how badly it’s all turned out, now that Bellatrix Lestrange and the rest are on the loose, and more evil than ever after years in jail, handing out Devil’s Snare in hospitals to choke poor Broderick Bode to death.”

She shuddered, as if she was cold. Ronald moved to stand, to fix her some tea, but she stopped him with a hand on his elbow, and put the kettle on herself with a flick of her wand.

“No,” she went on. “I knew Lucius well by the time I sent you to him. He’d been a model husband and father to Narcissa and Draco for over a year. And she was a lovely mother, and so sad that Draco was her only chance to be one. I knew Lucius would reform only if he was permitted to stay out of prison, to be at home with his family, thinking of how close he’d come to losing everything. He fought your coming at first -- embarrassed and suspicious -- but Narcissa wanted nothing more. She loved you at first sight. Everyone did, but her especially. And she needed a sibling for Draco, something she couldn’t provide herself. After all he’d put her through, Lucius owed her that much. I owed her that much...”

“So Mum knows,” Ronald confirmed. “She knows she’s raising Dad’s son by someone else?”

Molly hiccuped into a nod. “We’ve never spoken of it directly. In fact, whenever Lucius raises the subject of your paternity, I tell him I can’t be sure. I tell him there’s still a chance you might be Arthur’s. But I’ve always known, Ronald. No potion required. I’ve always seen no one else but Lucius when I see you. It must be the same for Narcissa."

With that, she reached out and touched his face, her palm formed to his sharp, Malfoy jaw. She tapped the end of his long, pointed nose with her fingertip.

The kettle was whistling on the counter, high and demanding, but Ronald could not stop thinking of Narcissa. “So Mum knows that -- you and Dad -- that you -- “

“Yes, so does Arthur. We both told them within days of the accident.”

“The accident?”

Molly took another deep breath, and as the tea fixed itself on the counter, she explained her encounter with Lucius in the Prewett cemetery the afternoon the Milletus pollen was in the air.

"I knew it," Ronald said.

She described what happened unadorned, nothing like a love story. He had to ask after it anyway, and in the most startling way possible.

“Why did you let me live?” Ronald said. “If I was a love potion accident, between people who didn’t love each other -- I should have been a monster. You should have terminated me -- “

Molly clamped her hand over his mouth. “Stop,” she said. “The truth is, I did threaten your father with that. When I said it, I was shocked and mortified at what had happened, and I wanted to hurt him. But I never meant it. And I never truly feared you’d be damaged.”

Ronald’s eyes widened. "You mean -- ”

“No, we weren’t in love,” she said. “But we had been something like close in school. All the girls in our year fancied Lucius Malfoy. That was nothing special. It was more than that with me though. I’m not sure why. He was kind to me. Tried to kiss me goodbye on the last day of our last term. Seems it never quite left me. Such things tend not to. I’m not sure what it felt like from his side, but he stopped me, after, as I was about to leave the Prewett cemetery that day, and he promised me you would be undamaged -- if there was a you.”

She leaned forward to pat Ronald's knee. “It was enough, wasn’t it? You’re not damaged in the least. That girl out there keeping Arthur occupied, you’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

“Uh, yeah.” He leaned back as his teacup floated past his chest, moving from the counter to the table. “How do you feel about Dad now? If I may -- I mean -- I suppose you don’t -- “

Molly stood and took Ronald’s face in her hands again. She searched it, looking for something. Maybe it was Lucius. 

“I am not in love with him,” she said again. “But he is a part of me. A strange, sad part. One I lost without ever really having it. We will always share our lives because we’ll always share you. And I still have a hope that he can be saved through what I gave him -- through you. The entire country stands to benefit from that. And I continue to hope for it, even though Bellatrix and the rest are now at large, and Harry tells us You-know-who is back. There is still hope.”

Ronald raised his hands to take hers, drawing them away from his face to hold them in both of his. “Mum,” he said, “if I’m going to save Dad, merely existing isn't enough. I need to act. And before I can do that, I need to know what it was Arthur was guarding in the Department of Mysteries when he was attacked by the snake.”

Molly sat back in her chair with a creaking thud. “Act? No, no acting. You’re just a boy for now, Ronald. In due time -- ”

“There isn't time. We can’t wait,” he said.

“We?”

“Yes, Draco and I. Harry and Hermione too -- a whole bunch of kids at school actually. We’re not being trained properly so we’re trying to figure out how to do something about all this on our own.”

“A whole bunch?” Molly interjected. “Fred and George, Ginny too?”

Ronald swallowed. He should have anticipated this. There was no point in denying it. “Yeah,” he said, almost like an apology.

“Ginny is fourteen!”

“And brilliant, Mum. Talented. She might be the best duelist we have. And Fred and George are geniuses. If they wanted to, they could bring the whole school to its knees with just a box of their fireworks or their sickness pastilles. There’s nothing they can’t do,” he said.

She was too stunned to be angry, or to say anything at all.

“We can’t go back to just waiting for the world to come undone,” he went on. “You may as well help us, warn us of wrong moves, if you can. Like infiltrating the Department of Mysteries. Harry is obsessed with that place -- dreams of it every night, and sometimes even when he’s awake. And Draco -- Draco is at home as we speak, trying to find out what we can do to save our Dad. He’s gone there even though everyone suspects Bellatrix is there too now -- “

Molly shook her head, her eyes wide. “No, he can’t go there. They’ll be waiting for him. Someone needs to stop him.”

“It’s too late. He’s there. That’s how desperate we are. So please,” Ronald said. “If you can’t help Draco, at least tell me what is down there in the Ministry? Do we risk trying to find it? Is there any use in it?”

“No,” Molly blurted. “Please, don’t go there. It’s nothing. A bluff. It was all a distraction to slow You-know-who, to keep him occupied searching for something useless until we could convince the Ministry he is indeed a threat once more.”

Ronald sat back, aghast. “Dumbledore sent Arthur down there to guard nothing? He risked his life for a bluff?”

She nodded. “That’s the absurd truth of it. There was a prophecy made the year you were born. It’s stored in the Department of Mysteries. When it was first made, You-know-who had -- a spy who heard only half of it. But that information was what led him to the Potters, and his first brush with death. He thinks if he hears the whole of the prophecy, he’ll be able to kill Harry once and for all and come to full power.”

Ronald blinked. “And that's not true?"

She gulped at her tea. "Dumbledore doesn’t think so. Of course he doesn’t. The interplay between prophecy and free will is complicated. It’s never simple, never just a matter of hearing magic words about some unalterable future event and ‘poof’ there it is. Greatest Dark Wizard of our time, my arse."

“Well, even so, does anyone know what the rest of it says?” Ronald tried.

She huffed. “Yes, Dumbledore knows. And the seer herself, stars help her. That’s how we know it’s not important.”

“But it is important enough for Arthur to -- “

“Yes, it was a calculated risk that may not have been worth it. And you’ll notice no one is guarding it anymore. So forget it. Forget the Department of Mysteries. There’s nothing for Harry there.” She drank her tea, hungrily, like it was medicine. “But do not forget that the only reason You-know-who wants it is to kill Harry. He’d be just as happy to kill him before he hears the prophecy, if given the chance. And so,” she set her cup down with a clatter, “the most important thing all of you can do is to stay safe. Do not engage You-know-who in any way. Pester Harry to practice his Occlumency, to use his free will to separate his destiny from You-know-who’s.”

Ronald sighed, his head thrashing on his neck.

She patted his knee again. “I know young people hate it, but sometimes the best course of action, even in a heated conflict, is to be still.”

Ronald’s emotions burst. He sprang to his feet, pacing beside Molly’s kitchen sink. His voice was loud and sarcastic. “Oh, you mean like all of you kept still when you were young? All of you putting safety first? Feelings never anything but perfectly in check?” 

“Ronald, dear -- “

“No,” he said. “We’re not going to sit and wait while Dumbledore nudges us around a chess board, some of us sacrificed for foolish gambits that don’t play out. And no, I don’t believe my father came to you on the Prewett estate to apologize for my uncles. He came to you because his wife kept losing pregnancies and he needed to assure a Malfoy heir out of a woman with pure-blood, proven fertility, and who was enough in love with him to prevent love potion damage. Maybe he was hoping you’d come up with another set of twins for him.”

“Ronald,” she roared back at him. “It wasn’t a potion. It was an environmental accident. It was the vegetation on my uncle’s land that enchanted us. Lucius couldn’t have known -- “

He barked a scornful laugh, loud as he answered. “Maybe you don’t know my father as well as you think you do. I’m tired of it. Tired of all of you telling us how to make it through a time like this. In your own time, your generation knew nothing but rash, dangerous action. And now you’ve got the nerve to try to tell us ‘no’.”

“Yes, we were rash,” she hollered back at him. “And look where it’s got us? Nothing was solved, just postponed. And our punishment for that is to live to see it descending all over again, but on our children this time.”

Ronald was raising his head, opening his mouth to say more, when the Floo flashed green behind him. It flared but no one appeared, the light around it bending, straining. There was a rush of wind and heat before the fireplace coughed a wizard out onto the floor. 

“Lucius!”

He looked up at her from the floor. “Molly,” was all he said.  
Even through his lingering anger and his new surprise and worry at seeing his father appear, Ronald noticed the look that passed between Molly and his father, and felt it tear at his heart. Had they always looked at each other like that? With sadness, with longing?

“I’ve come for Ronald.” Lucius said, the light from the Floo dying as he got to his feet. He didn’t look Ronald in the face as he closed his fist in the back of his son’s coat. “You. Back to school. Now.”

Ronald leaned away from him. “Draco. What’s happened to Draco? You shouldn’t be here when he’s -- ”

But Lucius wouldn’t speak another word. There was no time for Ronald to argue, not even to say that Pansy was being left behind. Lucius had already turned on the spot and Apparated both himself and his firstborn away.


	28. Twenty-eight

While the rest of the school headed off to Hogsmeade, the door to a dungeon office closed behind Draco Malfoy, and he and Professor Snape were alone. A fire burned on the hearth, already crackling green.

Snape was brisk, his words and movements clipped to prevent them from spiraling into agitation. “Occlumency is to be engaged constantly while you are in the manor. With Legilimens like the Black sisters and the Dark Lord, if they can see you, they can read you.”

Draco frowned. “My mother would never -- “

Snape towered to his full height, interrupting. “I wonder, Draco, have you ever seen your mother truly desperate? Genuinely terrified? Have you?”

He didn’t know how to answer. 

“Well, I have seen her exactly like that,” Snape said, almost in a whisper close to Draco’s ear. “And I can tell you, there is NOTHING she wouldn’t do.” He leaned away, less intense but still giving orders. “Drink this,” he said, uncorking a small vial.

“What is -- “

“I said, drink. It fortifies your strength, to allow you to continue the Occlumency even after the energy in your body begins to flag.”

Draco tossed the potion down his throat, grimacing as Snape nodded. He pressed a second, identical vial into Draco’s hand. “Try not to take it. If you take two vials in a single day, you may wind up completely unconscious as a rebound effect. But do not hesitate to drink it if you truly need it, if it gets you back here.”

Draci rolled the vial between his fingers before sliding it into his pocket. 

“Don’t stash it there. You’ll need to change into traditional clothing,” Snape said. “It wouldn’t do for the Dark Lord to find any traces of the Muggle word about you. I have taken the liberty.”

He summoned a packet of Draco’s own clothes he had somehow obtained from the dormitory. As it hit Draco in the chest, Snape spun around to give him privacy.

“Right down to the pants?” Draco asked when he saw how thoroughly Snape had packed. “He’s not going to have me strip off, is he?”

He saw a shudder run through Snape’s shoulders. “It is not likely, but neither is it impossible.”

Draco gulped at the dungeon air. In spite of the fire, it was cold enough to raise peaks along his bare skin as he slipped out of his clothes.

“Review,” Snape said, his back still turned. “Bellatrix Lestrange is…”

Draco began, reciting by rote memory. “My mother’s older sister. Schooled with my father. Murderer, maimer, fugitive. She remembers me as a baby, and I will do well to present a face of innocence and affection to her.”

“And Rodolphus Lestrange…”

“Is not as dull and useless as he seems. I should guard myself around him as if he were a watchful, formidable foe, no matter how drowsy or drunk he appears.”

“Peter Pettigrew…”

“Otherwise known as Wormtail, he is as opportunistic as his animagus rat form. Bows and scrapes to the Dark Lord but has no real love or loyalty for him. I must never say anything it would be fatal for him to overhear, because at any time, he may be listening.”

Snape paused, shuddering again as he said, "Nagini…"

“That’s not a person.”

“Not anymore, but it once was.”

Draco's voice was muffled as he draped a scarf around his head and face, almost like a Death Eater's mask. "An enormous viper, not a true snake but a magical creature open to possession by the Dark Lord. Avoid it."

Snape sensed that Draco was fully clothed and spun around to face him once more. “Good. Now, something new. Lucius Malfoy...”

“Come on, Sir, there’s no need -- “

“Lucius Malfoy….”

Draco took a deep breath. “I dunno - he has no more passion for the Dark Lord’s vision. Would like to escape to protect his family, but fears that nothing would expose us to the violence of the Dark Lord more than deserting him.”

Snape jerked one shoulder uneasily but did not correct him. “And how ought you to behave around him?”

“Around my father?”

“Yes, Draco. There may be nothing more important than this.”

He rolled his head miserably. “As if I am my father, at the same age, risking too much, making mistakes. Only this time, he can detect it, go back and stop me -- himself -- us. I don’t know, Sir.”

“That will do. That will do for now,” Snape said, coming close again. “And last of all, Narcissa Malfoy.”

Draco swallowed hard. “I treat her with coldness. Bravado. Like I think I’ve outgrown her -- so bad and rude she can tell that I’m acting, in spite of my Occlumency.”

Snape nodded. “Yes, good. Mention my involvement to her somehow, and then you may trust her not to interfere."

"Trust, Sir?"

"Foremost and always." He strode forward, shepherding Draco toward the fire. "Remember that by merely presenting yourself at the manor, showing your face to your aunt, you placate the demands the Dark Lord has been making on your parents. Do nothing but appear and return. Through this, you buy them time -- allow others to make moves of their own.”

“Sir, there’s one person you haven’t quizzed me about. One more person I might find in the manor today.” Draco said, not moving to the fire, waiting. 

Snape pursed his lips and tapped them with his fingertip, pacing away from Draco. “The Dark Lord,” he said. “In the unfortunate event that you meet him, you will bow your head. You will speak with reverence, deference. You will answer his questions and say no more. Above all, you must not mention Potter. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Accept the Dark Lord’s compliments, but in no wise believe them. Do nothing to appear as a threat. If at all possible, you will not look him in the eye. Your Occlumency is precocious, it shows talent, but it is still a new skill. Do not push it beyond your capacity or…” 

He stood by Draco, smoothing the sleeves of his fine wool robe, gripping his arms in each of his hands. “Take care, boy.”

They couldn't look at each other. Draco's throat was tight, his voice rasping as he said, “You’ll watch through the fire, won’t you sir?”

Snape sighed. “Through this fire and into the manor’s grand hall, yes. But if they take you to the drawing room, the view will be obscured, protected. I won’t -- “ His voice was breaking into a rattle. He forced a cough. “Be wise, Draco. The time has come.”

From a small pouch behind the clock on the mantle, Snape shook a handful of Floo powder into Draco’s palm. With a shout and a flash, Draco was gone, Snape’s grim, hawkish face and his dim office disappearing. In its place the bright, vaulted hall where Draco’s mother’s grand piano sat at the foot of a magnificent staircase came into view.

As the roar of the Floo died away, other noises flooded into Draco’s perception -- voices without words. There was a high, shrill cheering, growing louder, jarring in time with the clack of hard-soled shoes over marble-tiled floors. 

Quieter than this human racket, yet still audible somehow, was the sound of a hiss. Even before he knew the source of it, the sound shot panic through Draco’s body -- his nerves and skin. A massive snake, green and writhing over the smooth, cold floors, was racing at him, twisting along the corridor from the drawing room. 

Behind it, capering and cackling, was a witch with wild black hair, brazen, carrying on as if she belonged in the house. She followed the snake, eager to see the spectacle that would unfold once they reached the hall. The snake was about to kill and feed on whoever had dared to intrude on Malfoy Manor.

That could not be him.

The roar and blast of hot air from the fire behind him told Draco that it was indeed him. He lurched into action, lunging away from the fireplace, leaping on top of the piano, his wand out, completely heedless of all bans on under-aged magic.

As he darted away from the snake’s target, the scarf he had wound around his head and shoulders slipped, one end falling to hang long and loose to his knees. His face and hair were now uncovered, fully visible. At the sight of him, the dark witch’s cackling changed. She was no longer laughing, but shrieking, calling the snake back, pleading with it.

It was impossible to tell whether the creature couldn’t understand, or couldn’t care less, but it was unmoved by the witch’s orders. With more speed, more hunger, it closed in on Draco, near enough now for him to see the red of its eyes. Its lower half still coiling forward, the front of the snake reared up, its fleshy maw snapping open. From between its yellow fangs, Draco watched its tongue flick and sizzle, tasting him on the air as he raised his wand to deliver a hex he knew wouldn’t be enough to repel its attack.

Before either of them could strike, the snake made an oddly human sound, a hiss of anger and disgust. It veered away, mouth closing, body curling on itself, rolling through the piano legs and gliding back to the drawing room, as if sulking. 

It was gone, and Draco slid off the top of the piano, slumping onto the keys with a loud, terrible chord. He stayed there as the piano’s noise died away along the high ceiling, his hand dropped over his pounding heart.

But the onslaught wasn't over yet.

“It’s him!" the dark witch was calling, skipping toward him and pulling him off the piano by the front of his robes. “Come all on his own, like a good boy.”

Draco blinked innocently at her. “Auntie Bella? Is it you?”

She let out another squeal. “Yes, my darling. I’m here.” She clutched him to herself, the bones of her prison-emaciated frame palpable through her gown. She pressed her cheek to his and turned to whisper in his ear. “So grown up. So well-developed. Auntie has missed you. Oh, look at you...”

She was indeed looking him over, leaning back to see him as her hands stayed clawed in his sleeves. She started at his feet, her mad grin expanding as her eyes traced the long lines of his legs, her hands releasing his sleeves and splaying on his chest, formed to the contours of his torso as she followed the V to his waist and back to his shoulders. She was lifting her head to examine his face just as he recovered from the shock of the snake attack and being groped by his aunt enough to churn up the defensive waves of his Occlumency.

It was done barely in time. Her eyes met his, and he felt her charge at his mind. He read the surprise in her face, no magic required, as she capsized in his unforeseen skill in Occlumency. Her expression went from startled to delighted. “Good boy! Such a good boy!” she said. “Not our precious golden baby any more, but a true wizard who knows how to keep his own mind. Ready for service...”

He looked away, as if embarrassed, because he was embarrassed. It was enough of an excuse to break their eye contact and relieve the pressure of her invading Legilimency. He realized how weak Potter had been, and how even Snape’s harshest attacks had been tempered with gentleness, mercy. Draco fought not only to keep her out of his memory, but to keep himself from acting on the visceral anger the Legilimency provoked in him, to stop himself from lashing back at her.

She was withdrawing on her own, presently more interested in the outside of him than the inside. “Aren’t you your father’s son,” she marveled, her fingers holding his chin, tilting his face to examine its angles. “Lucius all over again. Lovely. Hopefully not so stupid.” 

Leaning forward, she sniffed at his neck. “There it is. You smell like us. It’s what sent the snake away. She had to be charmed not to eat those who smell of Black or Malfoy, otherwise none of us would have survived in the house with her this long. Such is the wisdom and the mercy of the Dark Lord. Come, he has been waiting -- ”

“Bella!” a voice called from beyond the stone balustrade along the top of the stairwell. “Who have you -- “ The shouting morphed into a stifled scream. “Draco, darling!” 

Narcissa was floating down the stairs still wrapped in a dressing gown at midday, as if she was ill. “How have you come to be here?” She tipped her head toward Bellatrix, her eyes widening knowingly as she looked at him, as she took his hands and stepped into him, her face under his nose. “I thought the headmaster decreed you were not to leave school until Easter holidays. That’s what we were told. You’ll soon sit your OWLs -- ”

He shook her hands out of his, and stepped away, back toward the fireplace where Snape might be watching. “Useless school,” he spat. “Wasting my time. Who can be bothered to care about Ordinary Wizarding Levels when all the papers are full of news of my not-at-all ordinary aunt at last being free? You know I’ve wanted to meet her all my life, Mother. Never thought I’d be lucky enough to have her welcome me home herself. And so pleased to see me. Unlike you, Mother, keeping me away as you hang on that dundering headmaster’s advice about preparing for some pointless exams.” 

Draco couldn’t bring himself to sneer directly at his mother, but he cast as scathing a look as he could in her direction. Narcissa stood between him and her sister, stunned, but opening her mouth as if to speak again.

Draco interrupted before she could form a single word. “Yes, Professor Snape and I discussed it and decided this weekend’s Hogsmeade’s trip would be the perfect time for me to slip away from school, unnoticed.”

“Professor Snape?” Narcissa echoed, her eyebrows lifting.

Bellatrix snarled at the name. “Sniveling, skulking Snape. Still alive, is he? Still off hiding in Dumbledore’s school, passing him our secrets is he?”

“Stop, Bella,” Narcissa scolded. “Of course our Hogwarts operative must get along with the headmaster. It means nothing. His loyalty is as unchanged as your jealousy of him. You’ve always challenged Severus for the Dark Lord’s favour.”

She barked out a laugh. “Favour? Jealous? Jealous of what? His filthy Muggle name? Nobody. Half-blood. I don’t see why Lucius ever took to him. I don’t know why the Dark Lord suffers him to live -- “

“Aunt Bella,” Draco broke in, as if astounded. “I must say I did not expect to hear doubts about our Lord’s judgment coming from you.”

“What doubts? I have no doubts,” she said, her voice a wail as she defended herself. “I have complete faith -- “

“Then stop fuming over Severus Snape, at long last,” Narcissa finished. She tucked her hand into the crook of Draco’s arm, pulsing her grip against him -- one, two, three. It was her acknowledgement of his ruse. And he felt taller, bolder, more ready for what was to come.

Bellatrix had taken his other arm and was tugging him toward the corridor where the door to the drawing room still stood open. “Come, Draco. You must be anxious to meet our Lord.”

“Lucius!” Narcissa called, holding her son back. “Draco can’t meet the Dark Lord until he first sees Lucius.”

Bellatrix scoffed. “Blasted Malfoy patriarchal notions. Of course he can. Come along.”

“It isn’t that, Bellatrix. My husband and I have been working together to prepare this boy to be presented to the Dark Lord for sixteen years. Allow us ten more minutes to get the Floo dust off him and share a private word, for stars’ sake,” Narcissa said.

Bellatrix snarled. “Bloody useless Lucius!”

“Quiet, crone,” Rodolphus Lestrange said as he came limping out of the drawing room toward them. “Our lord says come in or scuttle off to your holes.”

The Dark Lord was growing impatient and Narcissa was through arguing herself. Until Draco turned seventeen, there were still only two people alive who could apparate within Malfoy Manor: its master and his wife. As she pulled Draco free from Bellatrix’s grip, Narcissa cast one more glance at the fire and then turned on the spot, bringing herself and her son into Lucius’s bedchamber.

A large parchment marked with intersecting straight lines, like a map, was spread on a table in front of him. He leaned on it, not reading but fretting. He looked up dully at the sound of Narcissa’s apparition, but jumped to attention when he saw Draco on her arm.

“What -- why? He can’t -- he’s got to go back,” he said, crossing the floor, taking Draco’s arm himself.

“He can’t,” Narcissa said as she used a soft white cloth to clean Draco’s forehead and cheekbones. She muttered a spell to quiet the room. “The Dark Lord heard the commotion of his entrance. Bella has seen him. I told her we’d clean him up and introduce him in ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes!” Lucius raved, his hands in his hair. “Just ten minutes before it’s all over -- “

Draco took the cloth from his mother and began wiping at the remaining Floo dust himself. “I couldn’t just sit at school while he overran our house and tortured the pair of you, Ronald and I, just sitting in school, waiting for the holidays when he’d come for us. We had to do something.”

“I was doing something,” Lucius answered through gritted teeth, waving at the map on the table. “It isn’t as easy as boys like you believe. And don’t bring Ronald into it. He is the son of blood-traitors in whom the Dark Lord has no interest.”

At this, Draco scoffed loudly.

Lucius winced at it but there was no time to question Draco over his reaction now. He forged on. “The Dark Lord has accepted a plan of mine to obtain his desires without your help. Your role has always been to further the goals of the Ministry at Hogwarts by working with Dolores Umbridge. That is all.”

“Snape doesn’t agree. If the Dark Lord doesn’t meet me soon, your loyalty will be suspect. I can’t let that happen. And apart from what goes on here, there’s more happening at Hogwarts than you know, Father,” he said, thinking of Harry’s visions, his unexplored connection to the Dark Lord. “More than I can tell you. It’s an opportunity we can’t miss. Snape agrees.”

Lucius sneered. “So he’s sent you here to sacrifice yourself?”

Narcissa swiped at the dust on Draco’s shoulders. “Severus would not do that.”

Draco let out his breath. “Of course he wouldn’t, but he does see the risk. He opposed me at first. But then he prepared me. He taught me Occlumency. And it works. I managed to rebuff Aunt Bella downstairs, before Mother came. She seemed pleased, called me a good boy, said it made me ready for service.”

Narcissa held his head again, turning his eyes down to look into hers. He braced himself for her to test him with her Legilimency but it never came. This was more of a medical examination than a spell. “Snape has given you a fortifying potion,” she said. “Did he give you a second dose?”

Draco nodded.

“Good. Before we enter the drawing room, take it.”

“But he said not to -- “

“In this, Severus is my student. And I said for you to take it.” She seldom spoke to her children so sternly. Draco took the vial from his pocket and held it ready in his hand.

“Where is Ronald in all this?” Lucius said.

“He’s at the Weasleys today, while the rest of the school is in Hogsmeade. Among other things, he went to find out what he can about the attack on Arthur at the Ministry,” Draco said.

At this, Lucius was furious, swearing and lunging at the table, crumpling the parchment map into a ball and throwing it at the wall.

Narcissa left off fawning over Draco and went to Lucius, gathering both of his hands in hers. “Darling, darling stop,” she cooed. “We must compose ourselves. Draco is here now. He can’t leave without an audience with the Dark Lord. We need to regroup and survive this.”

Lucius twisted his neck, refusing to look at her or his son.

She moved to stay within his sight. “If you’d seen him downstairs, with Bella, you’d have more confidence in him. He has handled her rather brilliantly thus far. He is bright and strong and Severus has prepared him well. Trust in that, darling. There’s nothing else we can do.”

Lucius took Draco by the arms, and with eerie similarity, gave him much the same instructions on dealing with the Dark Lord that Snape had given him. When it was finished, the family linked hands, ready to apparate to the corridor outside the drawing room.

Bellatrix was still at the foot of the stairs when they appeared. She screeched at the sight of them, running through the corridor to join them. As she came, Draco downed the last vial of fortifying potion. Narcissa nodded and they stepped into the open doorway.

Rodolphus Lestrange sat dozing in a corner of the sofa. Before the fire, a man twitched and fidgeted -- a small man who looked even smaller than he was, his spine hunched as if to protect his vital organs from an unrelenting threat. This would be Peter Pettigrew, Wormtail. He raised his head to sniff at the air as the Malfoys stepped inside.

From the room’s entrance, no one else was visible. But the space felt cold, tense, as if about to break. Then Draco saw it. Between the carved wooden legs of the armchair turned to face the fire was a pair of bare feet, grey like a ghoul’s. It was him.

A hand appeared, at the winged edge of the chair, waving. A voice, both powerful and wraithish called out. “Young Malfoy, come to your master.”

Bellatrix was at Draco’s back now, shoving him forward, delighted and cackling as quietly as she could. Draco stumbled across the rug, his parents coming with him, holding him upright.

“No need to coddle him,” the voice said. “Young Malfoy, Draco. Come to me.”

He straightened himself, stepped out of his parents’ arms and in front of the armchair. The fire burned at his back, its flames twisting as if tortured, as if something inside them was struggling to get out.

In the armchair sat the Dark Lord -- hardly human, red-eyed like the snake that had nearly eaten Draco, his features smoothed as if made from fabric frayed to almost nothing, his limbs lean as the branches of a dead tree with its bark long stripped away. 

“Ah,” he sighed with repulsive satisfaction at the sight of Draco. He rose to stand, his hand outstretched. “Perfect.”

With the second dose of Snape’s potion in his blood, Draco easily raised the raging tide of mental waves needed for Occlumency. It wasn’t difficult, but the Dark Lord had not assailed him yet.

His skin had a reptilian coldness to it as he took Draco’s left wrist and pushed his sleeve to his elbow. “Ah,” he said again, red eyes rolling into his head. “Yes, this will do.” Long grey fingers smoothed the white skin of Draco’s arm, tracing the blue lines of his veins with a greed verging on hunger. 

With his Occlumency, Draco steeled his nerves, not flinching or tensing at the touch.

“Yes, this will do very well. But not today,” the Dark Lord said, dropping Draco’s arm. “You are still unproven. And we would not bestow our highest honour, our dark mark, on any more unworthy supplicants.”

As he said it, he nodded at Lucius. Bellatrix, Rodolphus, and Pettigrew chuckled obligingly at the insult.

“Let us see,” the Dark Lord said, lifting his head to look Draco in the eye, “what you have brought me.”

He was in Draco’s mind -- no warning, no chance to simply turn him back. It was stronger than Bellatrix, crueler than Snape, a wave crashing over his own. This must be what it feels like to Potter, Draco thought, this feeling of utter helplessness. His memories bobbed around him, like flotsam from a shipwreck. He scrambled after the ones he remembered being warned were vital -- the ones about Potter and his visions, the connection to the Dark Lord he might not yet realize existed. It was sunk, safe for the moment. 

The next memory he felt more than saw -- Hermione Granger sitting next to him on a stone stair set into the side of a hill, after a quidditch match, feeding him oatmeal and kissing his face until he was so madly in love with her he had to leave. The image of this precious Muggle-born girl -- he pushed it deep into the currents. 

And as he did, something else, something priceless slipped away, into the grip of the invader. Draco should have found something useless and sent it out in its place, but the force of the intrusion had been too intense, too fast -- painful, disorienting. 

And now he had it. The Dark Lord had the memory of a ginger head bent over a potion in a glass -- a purple web in a silver solution.

Greedy with his treasure, the Dark Lord leapt out of Draco’s mind, the wraithish voice now rich with laughter. Draco fell to his knees on the carpet, his mother rushing to hold him.

“Well!” the Dark Lord howled. “You were right, Bella. All this time. And congratulations are in order, my dear Lucius. Your Weasley boy is no Weasley.”

Bellatrix capered behind him as Lucius’s face went from its usual pallor to something more like green.

“Surprisingly clever, that Prewett woman, telling you frankly that the boy’s father was Weasley. I had already found the image in your mind and it was most convincing. But our Draco has given me the truth,” he was wiping his eyes as his laughter abated. “Yes, delightful. I don’t blame you, Lucius, you gorgeous fool. You have fallen into the hands of canny women. But now that I know of all of your sons, I must have the set. Bring me the -- oh, what’s he called?”

Lucius’s voice croaked. “Ronald, my lord.”

“Yes, bring me Ronald Malfoy.”

Bellatrix mimed rolling up her sleeves. “He’ll be out of school this weekend, like his brother. Track him, Pettigrew. Let’s be off.”

“No, Bella,” Narcissa snapped. “You’re wanted by the law. It’s too dangerous. Lucius will go.”

And before anyone could argue, he did go, throwing himself into the fireplace, breaking down its wards and protections as he went, racing to get to Ronald.

Narcissa sat at the Dark Lord’s feet, Draco’s shoulders leaned against her knees. “My son has pleased you, my Lord?” she asked, head bowed.

“Indeed,” he said. “Put him away, upstairs. I will want him again, later. He is difficult to read, as all Black family members are. I shall need more time. Most promising, yes. I am in great hopes that in due time, we shall mark him for our use.”

Narcissa nodded, cradling Draco’s face in her hand. He was quiet, growing sleepy, the rebound effect of the potion setting in. His voice was a low murmur, barely audible even as she bent her ear to his mouth. “Mother, it slipped. Ronald, I -- “

“You did well, my darling. Your very best. Now you need to rest.”

The fire was sputtering again, the traces of the protective spells Lucius had broken fighting against another traveler. It would be Lucius, returning already, Ronald with him.

It wasn’t. Severus Snape appeared on the hearth instead. As he did, Nagini reared up from where she’d been sleeping next to the armchair. 

“Down,” the Dark Lord told her. 

Snape bowed low. “My lord, today’s Hogsmeade excursion has come to an end, and Young Malfoy’s absence has been noted by the headmaster. Given the fugitive status of his,” Snape raised his head to sneer at Bellatrix, “his aunt, the headmaster is most alarmed and has just met with the school faculty to discuss coming to this house tonight to ensure Young Malfoy’s safety unless he returns promptly.”

The Dark Lord scoffed. “He would dare.”

Snape went on. “My Lord, I have all confidence in your power to repel such advances. But should you wish to postpone a confrontation with the headmaster to a time of your own choosing, I suggest you allow me to bring the boy back to Hogwarts at once.”

The Dark Lord jolted to his feet. Pacing before the fire. 

Bellatrix was on her feet as well, her finger in Snape’s face. “That filthy Dumbledore. Bring him here to us, Snape, you wriggling worm, out of your hole to bring us threats from your true master. Bring him and let him die like a dog at our Lord’s feet.”

“Quiet, crone,” Rodolphus shouted. “Always the mad rush.”

The Dark Lord was nodding. “Yes, Rodolphus. Mad. Yes. We will not be forced. We will wait. Take the pretty boy back then, Severus.”

Without a word, without an instant of delay, Snape and Narcissa lifted Draco’s lolling body between them. Snape staggered to the hearth, Draco’s arm thrown over his shoulder, and with a whisper of the Hogwarts password, they were gone.


	29. Twenty-nine

In the heavy, cold early spring rain, the sound could have been mistaken for a thunderclap. In reality, it was Lucius Malfoy side-along apparating his son Ronald, appearing with a crash just outside the grounds of Hogwarts castle.

“Dad, we have to go back,” Ronald said. “I brought someone with me to the Weasleys. I can’t just leave her there.”

Lucius shoved him along the path at their feet. “You can leave her. Molly will take care of it. What you need to do is get yourself safely back to the protection of the school, immediately.”

“But she doesn’t -- “

“Go, Ronald. You can argue once you’re within the boundaries, if you have to.”

Ronald heaved an exasperated sigh as he stomped past the pair of standing stones set on either side of the pathway, marking the beginning of the area no one could Apparate in or out of.

“There,” he said, rounding on his father. “Are you happy?”

“Am I happy?” Lucius echoed.

For a moment, Lucius was silent. He stood on the path, his hair soaked dark with rain, falling in ropes around his face. His jaw was tense but open, his shoulders rising and falling as if he had just run all the way from the Burrow to the school. 

In the silence, Ronald shifted, tilting his head. His father had never looked at him this way before. He was fierce, but not quite angry, the tension in his mouth not unlike a smile. And the difference in his eyes -- wild and fraught -- what was it? 

Lucius was seeing Ronald for the first time without any doubt that the boy was his natural son. All at once, he broke into something like a laugh, rushing at Ronald, crushing him in his arms, slamming his son into his chest.

“Dad?”

Lucius’s hands grasped at him, palming the back of Ronald’s head. Lucius’s breath stuttered and hitched in the half-laugh against Ronald’s wet cheek.

“Dad?”

Lucius’s voice sobbed. “Yes. Yes, my son.”

Ronald raised his arms to return his father’s rough embrace. “Dad, what’s happened? Have you seen Draco? Is he -- “

Lucius stood back, looking intently into Ronald’s face. “He’s with his mother, exhausted but unhurt, last I saw him,” Lucius said. “I need to get back to the manor to make sure, but -- “ He pulled Ronald’s forehead against his, their skin icy cold. “You’re safe. I wasn’t sure. I’m so glad I got to see you, knowing more perfectly who you are. Glad -- overjoyed.”

Ronald’s eyes widened. “Draco’s told you about the potion?”

Lucius nodded against Ronald’s head. “Yes. I was nearly sure but -- to know, to hear that you are mine. It’s selfish, and for your own safety I should wish you had nothing to do with me. But the truth is Ronald, I have never been more pleased.”

Ronald broke into a smile, laughing in reply.

Lucius let go of the boy’s drenched ginger head to pat him hard on the shoulder. “Now quickly. Up to the castle.”

Ronald took three hurried steps up the path before turning back in time to see Lucius stride past the standing stones, and vanish.

\----------------------------------

Snape stepped out of the fire and onto his office hearth, Draco Malfoy hanging limply along his shoulder and back. He flicked his wand to transform the chair in front of the fire into a sofa and lowered Draco onto it, checking his fingernails, his eyebrows, and anything else that might have been damaged in the risky maneuver of taking an unconscious person who couldn’t speak the destination himself through a Floo.

Draco’s hair was grey with soot and his scarf was missing, but otherwise he seemed exactly as he had been when Snape sent him off. 

“Ronald…” Draco muttered.

“He’s fine. Your father went to him. Don’t fret over it, Draco.”

He quieted, his face hidden in a musty cushion. There was one more thing to check before he could be left alone to sleep off the rebound effect of the Occlumency fortifying potion. Snape sucked in his breath and pushed Draco's sleeve to his left elbow, baring an unburnt, unmarked arm. Snape's breath rushed out in relief. 

It hadn't happened. Not yet.

He sat back hard on the wooden chair next to the sofa, listening to Draco's deep, easy breathing. How had Lucius done it -- left Draco and Narcissa at the manor to chase after Ronald and Molly? Where did he find the resolve to make a decision like that, and so quickly? He must have known Snape was watching, and he'd intentionally left the manor by breaking the wards on the fireplace when he could have simply apparated, making way for Snape to enter.

Lucius and Narcissa, those beautiful fools, unable to raise their sons without the aid of himself and Molly and Arthur and, this Christmas, without those Muggle Grangers. Maybe, Snape thought, that's how it is for all successful families. Perhaps that was their secret. He certainly had no personal knowledge of what successful family life was like. His parents hadn’t enlisted anyone to help raise him. They could hardly be bothered to raise him themselves.

His heart rate returned almost to normal, Snape rose from the chair to settle in behind his desk where a stack of seventh year essays on healing potions waited to be marked. Miserable reading, but there’s no antidote for panic quite like mediocrity.

\-------------------------------------

When Draco awoke on a sofa he didn’t remember ever seeing before in Snape’s office, he was alone. Through a small, high window, he could see that the sun had set, but he didn’t know how late in the evening it was. Sitting up, blood rushed into his head, pounding against his skull. It felt like that morning after the manor’s New Years Eve ball, when he and Ronald were ten, and they’d decided they were old enough to be drinking the spicy red punch from the adults’ bowl. What the stars had been in that fortifying potion?

He called out for Snape, but no one answered. Maybe he was at dinner. Or maybe it was much later and he was asleep in bed, somewhere beyond the closed door at the back of the office. 

Draco found the clothes he’d been wearing that morning, ages ago, and stuffed them into his bag before letting himself out. He was thirsty and turned at the top of the stairs toward the kitchens.

Where was everyone? He understood why his parents couldn’t come to check on him. They’d trusted him with Snape to care for him in their place, but where was he? If they’d already been brought back safely, where were Ronald and Pansy? And where, he thought with a pang, was Granger? 

Maybe she’d heard that he’d failed to keep Ronald’s paternity a secret from the Dark Lord. She was a smart girl, maybe she’d come to the conclusion that he’d let it slip while preoccupied with hiding his relationship with her. Maybe she was sitting with Potter somewhere, right now, working herself into a noble frenzy where she had to end things between them in the interest of the greater good. Hadn’t Potter been on about the very same kind of thing, during the holidays? Ronald had said he’d been talking about leaving wherever they were staying with the Weasleys in London to go back to that awful Muggle aunt of his, cutting himself off from everyone for their own protection. 

Of course it was a rubbish idea. Making each of them alone and unprotected was exactly what the Dark Lord would want. Someone had talked Potter out of it, but would anyone step up to do the same for Draco -- for the son of a Death Eater sheltering fugitives and the Dark Lord himself? Potter would be only too happy to cut him out of the Order of the Sanctimonious, greater good or not.

Imagining all of this was making Draco furious. In the kitchen, he gulped two glasses of that infernal pumpkin juice and ate the sandwich a very nervous looking house elf made for him. He felt grimy from the Floo travel and dirty on a deeper level, as if the touch of the Dark Lord on his hands and arm had contaminated him. He shuddered and threw away the last few bites of the tart he’d been eating as a hurried dessert.

He left the kitchen through the rear stairwell, the one that always smelled like boiled potatoes. He had snogged Hermione here the first week they were back from Christmas holidays. He’d met her halfway up and kissed her as soon as he could reach her. She’d asked him if she was a bad kisser, and he’d told her of course she wasn’t and backed her against the wall to let her reassure herself -- right there. 

Was this what the castle would look like to him now -- every room and corridor a monument to some moment he’d shared with her? How was he going to stand being here -- being anywhere if she’d decided they were through?

He didn’t just feel dirty now, but sick, and his steps slowed as he reached the top of the stairs. Back in the empty Entrance Hall, its lights dimmed for late evening, he looked up the marble staircase as far as he could without moving any closer to it. He could go chasing after them -- those Gryffindors in their tower -- but his feelings were a difficult mix of being unworthy to approach them, but also too proud. 

And on top of everything, his head was still aching. Without deciding, he slid down the wall at his back and sat on the floor, his head in his hands, eyes closed, the heels of his hands pressed into their sockets, counter-pressure to the pain radiating from inside.

“Malfoy!”

He dropped his hands. There she was, Granger, folding a large parchment like a map, and jamming it inside her bag as she trotted across the Entrance Hall toward him. His heart lurched, its pulse hitting painfully on the inside of his forehead. She didn’t look happy to see him, her brows pinched together, her mouth a hard line.

“What are you doing on the floor?” she asked, dropping to her knees beside where he sat, talking fast. “Snape said he’d let us know when you were awake. But when we checked on you with the -- anyways, you weren’t in his office anymore. Are you alright? Can you stand?”

She held his face between her hands, brushing her fingers through his hair, loosening a light dusting of soot. “Look at the state of you,” she said. “Have you eaten?”

He nodded. “A bit.”

She released his head to feel along his shoulders and arms. “Did they hurt you?”

He let his chin droop toward his chest. “It’s just a headache.” To prove it, he moved to stand, stopping when she pressed a hand to his chest to hold him down. 

“Ronald told me you couldn’t keep his paternity a secret from them,” she said, almost too quietly to hear.

He slumped into the wall again. “Right.”

She withdrew her hand, folding it with her other one in her lap. “It’s my fault, isn’t it? Our secret must have distracted you and kept you from protecting your own brother.” She shifted her knees on the hard stone floor. “I get it. You’re mad at me.”

Draco sighed. “It’s not you, Granger. The Dark Lord -- he wouldn’t have stopped with the Legilimency until he found something he could use. If it hadn’t been Ronald’s paternity, it would have been something else. Or maybe the paternity might have taken a little longer for him to find, but he would have seen it eventually. It’s not you though. It was me. I wasn’t strong enough. Occlumency with him was nothing like training with Potter and Snape. The Dark Lord is relentless, violent -- horrifying.”

Her arms were around his neck and she was whispering earnestly in his ear. “I’m so sorry, Malfoy. Don’t go back there. You don’t have to. Please -- “

He braced his hands on either side of her ribcage. “It’s my home, with my family in it. Eventually I’ll have to -- “

“No, you won’t. We’ll get Dumbledore’s help, or something. Just don’t go. And don’t be mad at me -- “

He scoffed through the mass of hair engulfing his face. “Dumbledore, he can’t even keep the ministry out of his own school -- “

She wasn’t listening. “Even though I ruined everything for you today, don’t go off on your own. I am sorry. It should be me Voldemort is after now, not Ronald. I can’t go back and change that, but even though it’s happened this way, don’t go. We’re all stronger if we stay together. Dividing you from Ronald and Harry and me and everyone else is exactly what he wants. Please.” She paused for breath. “Draco, don’t leave me.”

He pried her grip loose enough for him to see her face in the low orange light of the lanterns hung far overhead. Her expression was twisted, as if she was steeling herself for impact. 

“Leave you?” Draco said.

She nodded, eyes still closed. “You’ve been avoiding me since you woke up. You’ve decided to act out that stupid, heroic cliché where you abandon me to keep me safe, like a Muggle superhero comic book -- “

“A what?“

“I hate it, Malfoy. It’s hackneyed and patronizing and it plays right into Voldemort’s plans. I won’t have it -- “

His hand rose between them, covering her mouth, the rest of her lightning fast tirade muffled against his palm. “Granger, will you please listen to me,” he said. “I’m sorry to shut you up, but I am trying to understand. I have questions.”

She nodded without a word, eyes wide and dark over the edge of his hand. He lowered it. There was her mouth, quiet and closed, sweetly waiting to answer his questions. He sprung forward, not speaking but kissing her, his arms closing around her and pulling her against him. A tiny squeal of relieved delight sounded inside her mouth and she returned his pressure, answering his movements with her own. 

It had only been a few hours since he kissed her goodbye, but it felt like years. He was a different person now, one attacked by the Dark Lord and left famished for goodness, for her. But he needed to speak, and he left her mouth open and wet as he spoke against her lips without quite breaking the kiss.

“It is impossible to make a hero, cliched or otherwise, out of a spoiled brat like me,” he said. “I never give up what belongs to me.”

“And you’re saying that’s -- “

“Shh,” he hushed her. “It’s your turn to listen. Think back to what I’ve already told you. In the corridor upstairs, on our first day back from holidays, I said I was nothing if not yours.”

She breathed a happy laugh into his mouth.

“You remember?”

“Mm-hmm,” she purred.

He kissed her lightly, on the tip of her nose. “Good. And by not arguing, you admit that in return you are mine."

She sighed again, her voice sweet. "Mine," she echoed.

It was a beautiful sound, and he pressed her with another deep, ravishing kiss. "So," he finished, "don’t go jumping to conclusions about me leaving you."

She nodded, nestling her face against his neck. “I won’t if you won’t.”

He tipped his head back, pausing, swallowing hard. “When I woke up in Snape’s office and no one was there, I almost convinced myself you were never coming for me."

She smoothed his robes against his chest with her cheek. "Silly Malfoy. It was Snape. He wouldn't let us in. But I was silly too, I suppose. I should have known better than to come looking for you with Harry in tow."

He huffed. “Potter?”

“Yes, Potter,” she said. “As soon as you’re ready, he and Ronald are waiting upstairs for us. Ronald found out something big from Molly Weasley. Something that affects what we’ll have to do next.”

Draco groaned into her shoulder. “This is my life now.”

“It’s not so bad. You already like Ronald and me. I’m sure you and Harry will be pals soon.” She was smirking, disbelieving.

He rolled his eyes. “Whatever we do, we can’t risk sitting here snogging where someone might see us. Off we go.”

\------------------------------------

“So she just stormed out?” Ronald gaped at Harry. 

Harry spun around to pace the length of the vanished room again. “Yeah, right out into the rain, like in a bad Muggle rom-com movie. While everyone in Puddifoot’s sat and glared at me.” Even though Hermione had spent a good part of the afternoon explaining to him what had gone so very wrong on his Valentine’s date with Cho Chang, Harry still didn’t quite understand.

“You’re better off without her, mate,” Ronald said. “Loads too much drama with that one.”

Pansy faked a gasp, pivoting where she sat on the table beside Ronald to hook her legs over his. “Here I thought you liked drama.”

“Stars, no,” Ronald said, folding his hands over her knees. “Can’t seem to avoid it, but I wouldn’t say I like it. I mean, if I could have got Dad to drop the theatrics and slow down enough to bring you back with us from the Burrow instead of making us wait for Arthur to plod over with you, I would have much preferred that.”

“It wasn’t theatrics,” Harry said. “Voldemort thinks he has a right to your service now he knows you’re a Malfoy by blood. You had to get where he couldn’t reach you as fast as possible. For once, I agree with your father on something.”

“Well, it wasn’t very chivalrous,” Ronald said. Pansy beamed at him, curving her arm around his waist and settling her face against his shoulder. “I would never choose to leave you behind,” he said, his mouth against her fringe.

“Oh, for stars’ sake,” Harry interrupted. “Recently dumped best friend standing right here. Give it a rest, would you?”

Pansy gave him a rude gesture instead.

Harry was still glaring at her when Hermione and Draco came through the false wall. “Perfect, just who I wanted to see,” he groaned.

“Feeling’s mutual, Potter.”

“Now be nice to each other,” Hermione said, taking up her usual position between the two of them. “Everyone here has had a rather terrible day and we ought to be gentle with one another.”

Four sets of eyes rolled in unison.

Harry advanced toward Draco. “You’ve met him today, have you? First time?”

Draco gave a curt nod. “First time I can remember, yes. He wants to mark me, but says I have to prove myself first.”

Harry frowned. “What does that mean?”

“Well, picking my brain with Legilimency for starters,” Draco said. “Snape’s Legilimency is nothing compared to his.“

“Don’t I know it,” Harry fumed.

“I can’t let him do it again,” Draco said. “It’s too much. He’s already got hold of the memory of Ronald reading his paternity potion. I managed to keep your connection to him secret, Potter. But the next time he comes at me -- I can’t promise I’ll be able to hold him back. My Occlumency is good enough to keep me calm, to let me lie in front of him, but once he’s in my mind it’s…”

When he couldn’t finish, Harry supplied the rest for him. “When he’s in your mind it’s hopeless.”

A grave look passed between them. “No hope at all,” Draco said. At last they’d found common ground, only it was awful. 

Draco spoke. “I need to find something else to satisfy him that I’m useful besides Legilimency.”

“Well, it won’t be the weapon at the Department of Mysteries,” Ronald said. “Molly confessed that it’s nothing, a bluff, some prophecy from sixteen years ago that Dumbledore has heard and doesn’t care about. But You-know-who doesn’t know that and he’s obsessed with it. That’s what the Order is using it for, to keep him preoccupied so he doesn’t act on any worse plans.”

“So we don’t need the prophecy ourselves,” Hermione concluded. “But it helps us by distracting him.”

Ronald nodded. “Yeah. But other than that, Molly had no advice but to hide here at school and nag Harry to practice his Occlumency. That’s the only thing You-know-who wants besides the weapon. He wants Harry.”

Draco pressed his hands to his aching head. “No, that can’t be all. He wants Potter dead because he thinks he’s standing in the way of other goals. What are they? Imagine Potter is already dead, what then?”

Ronald fidgeted where he sat on the table. “Can’t say I like this exercise.”

“He’s right though,” Hermione said. “Sorry, Harry, but why does Voldemort want you out of the way? If you were gone, who would he come for next?”

“Dumbledore,” Harry said. “I’ve heard them say it -- that Dumbledore is the only wizard Voldemort ever feared. He’ll be next after me.”

“Well, what if we could skip the prophecy and Harry, and hand Dumbledore over to Voldemort straightaway?” Hermione said.

Everyone was talking at once, asking how and why they could do such a thing.

“We couldn’t force him, of course,” Hermione said. “Dumbledore would have to choose to put himself forward all on his own. He is indeed the most powerful wizard in the country and that is precisely why we need to nudge him out into the open.”

Harry was shaking his head. “No, he won’t act on a nudge. He’s already got some plan. Even if he would spare a few minutes to have a word with me this year, he’d never choose to change things up. All the members of the Order say the same, even Sirius, when he’s pressed. They want us to trust his plan.”

Ronald scoffed. “His brilliant plan? The one that got my step-father chewed by a snake while guarding nothing of any consequence in the basement of the Ministry?”

“The plan that has him sat up in his office while Umbridge undermines the entire school?” Pansy added.

Harry took it up. “Yeah, the plan that’s got Sirius and me hiding in our cozy safety zones, waiting for who knows what while Dumbledore himself won’t even glance at me?”

“The one that’s set my parents and me and now my brother squarely in the sights of the Dark Lord, like acceptable collateral damage?” Draco finished.

Hermione took his hand. “I know what we have to do,” she said. “It’s not going to be pleasant or easy, and it’s going to take all of us.”

Ronald beckoned with his hand. “Let’s hear it.”

She took a deep breath. “The next time the DA has a meeting, we get caught.”

Harry scoffed. “No, absolutely not. We’ve come so far. Even Neville -- “

“That’s just it, Harry,” Hermione interrupted. “You’ve taught us all the way up to patronuses. You’ve been brilliant. But it’s run its course. So next time, Draco tells Umbridge there’s a secret meeting going on, we all run off, you get caught, and we make sure they find the parchment where we all signed our names. The one labeled ‘Dumbledore’s Army.’”

“But then everyone is exposed,” Harry argued.

She shook her head. “If you get caught leading a forbidden student group, you’ll be expelled. You’ll be out there on your own, all alone where Voldemort can find you. With the list, it makes it look as if Dumbledore has organized us. He’s the leader, and he’ll have to answer for it himself. He’ll do it in order to protect you, Harry. And he can handle himself if he gets driven out of the school. What’s more, with him gone because of something Draco did, Voldemort might be satisfied and ease up on the Malfoy family.”

Harry sat down on the floor. “We can’t just get Dumbledore fired. It won’t be the same here without him.”

“Maybe that’s why we have to do it,” Hermione said. “If Dumbledore becomes Voldemort’s target instead of you, maybe people will wake up and take this seriously. You’re a kid everyone can ignore. And while they do, Voldemort keeps growing stronger, unchecked. The Ministry and the Daily Prophet are unwittingly helping his cause. Even Minister Fudge, awful as he is, honestly thinks he’s doing the right thing. He’s that deluded.”

She sat beside Harry on the ground. “Something big needs to happen. Something revolutionary. And for once, it would be nice if we chose what it was ourselves instead of waiting for Voldemort to choose it for us.”

Ronald stood up from the table. “She’s right. She’s always right.” He walked to where Harry sat and extended his hand to heft him off the floor. 

Draco did the same for Hermione. 

“It’s going to make you look bad, Malfoy,” she said as she rose toward him. “All of this and the fact that Harry did an interview for the Quibbler with Rita Skeeter today where he named your father among the people at the graveyard last year.”

“He had to,” Ronald said. “It’s not like people won’t be expecting it. Would have been suspicious if Dad was left out of the story, really. You-know-who would have been wondering if it was a sign he was in it together with Harry.”

Draco nodded, speaking directly to Hermione. “I don’t care how it looks as long as you and Ronald know the truth. I’ll do it. I’ll be the bad guy. At this point, I really can’t be anything else.”

She held him tightly around the neck. “I’m sorry all the same,” she said.

For once, Harry did not grimace at their embrace.

“I’ll do it too,” Pansy said. “Give me the list, Granger. I’ll get it to Umbridge when the time comes. Draco will be busy chasing Potter the night you get caught. Got to make it dramatic and believable now, don’t we boys?”

Hermione pawed through her bag until she found the DA parchment. “It’s jinxed. I can’t give it to you or I’ll be marked for life. But if I drop it on the floor, you should be able to pick it up.” She stood with the parchment in her fingers, ready to let it glide to the ground. “Harry?” she said. “Tell me to go ahead. I won’t do this unless you agree to it.”

He shuffled his feet, looked over the tops of his glasses at the blur of her face and at Ronald’s. He trusted them, hated that this might hurt them, but didn’t know how else to make the change they needed -- that everyone needed. Trying to avoid eye contact, he looked at Pansy and Draco. They complicated everything, but they seemed sincere, properly stoic and scared.

“Yes, Hermione,” Harry said. “Do it.”

The parchment drifted to the floor at their feet.


	30. Thirty

Harry felt awful, standing in the room of requirement watching the DA practice conjuring Patronuses. They were brilliant, all of them just weeks away from astounding government examiners with their skills on their Defense Against the Dark Arts OWLs. Cho was there too, smiling sweetly at him over the silvery trails of her swan. She’d made up with him, kissed him again, and for now, they had found that delicate balance of theirs. 

So of course, it was all about to explode. 

Over jubilant voices calling out incantations, Harry was listening carefully for the first sound of impact at the room’s entrance. It would be Malfoy pelting the door with a quaffle, a warning. From inside the room, it was meant to sound like someone about to break through the door. Once it came, Harry would send everyone scrambling before Umbridge and the prefects she’d recruited rounded the corner into the corridor, chasing the DA as they fled. 

Even if no one but himself was caught, they had all signed their names to the parchment Pansy would hand over to Umbridge at the end of the chase. Caught or not, everyone here, everyone who trusted him, would have to answer for this. 

In all the activity, no one but Harry, Ronald, and Hermione noticed the first thud against the door when it came. 

No one was sure what Hermione meant when she called out, “We’ve been compromised.”

Fred and George just looked startled when Ronald shoved Ginny at them and said, “Run.”

But everyone knew exactly what to do when Harry shouted, “Umbridge!”

There was a charge for the door, Harry pushing at the mass of people from behind. “Go on! Hide!”

He was last out of the room, pulling the door closed and glancing up and down the corridor. Most everyone had reached the corner, about to turn out of sight. Only Hermione was hanging back as Ronald tugged her onward. 

From the other direction, Harry heard shouting and the slap of footsteps. Umbridge was cheering on her prefect militia as they closed in on the DA. He couldn’t just stand there, stupidly waiting to turn himself over to them. Where was Malfoy? They’d agreed he would take Harry down in an attack, so it looked authentic. But they’d never gone over the details. He must have been hiding, or in a Disillusionment charm. Umbridge’s voice was closer now, that shrill, evil sweetness Harry had come to pair with the wounds in his hand at detention. 

He ran. If Malfoy had chickened out, the others could come looking for him in the boys’ toilets, just ahead. They were welcome to chase him -- whatever it took to buy the rest of the DA some time.

All at once, without anyone speaking an incantation, Harry’s ankles stopped while the rest of him kept going, sending him falling, sprawling onto the floor with a shout.

Non-verbal tripping jinx. Malfoy.

There he was, coming out from behind a dragon-shaped vase, where he must have been waiting while every DA member but this one ran past him. He was calling for Umbridge, announcing he’d caught Potter. She was delighted, awarding points to Slytherin, but not content to let the other students off. She took hold of Harry and sent her posse to bring anyone out of breath or otherwise suspicious back to her office for questioning. 

Caught between Umbridge‘s grip and her drawn wand, Harry watched Malfoy scrambling to follow a wolfish looking Montague toward the library.

Umbridge gave his arm a violent jerk as she set off with him toward the headmaster’s tower.

\------------------------

“Some of them will be in here,” Montague hissed at Draco as they stepped through the library doors.

Malfoy gave a sharp nod. “Yeah, I’ve got it. You can check the boys’ bathroom. Pansy took the girls’.”

“Ten minutes until closing,” Madam Pince announced as the boys clipped past her desk. 

“Later. You’re not going to have this entire place searched in ten minutes, Malfoy,” Montague sneered as he launched into the stacks on his own.

Panic shot along Draco’s arms to his fingertips. Yes, Hermione was going to be caught when they found her name on that list of DA members. But by then, they’d be distracted with Dumbledore. Mere students would be nothing. At this moment, however, if Montague caught her here, physically, with those meaty hands of his -- it would not be nothing. 

Draco had to find her. Heading toward the restricted section, he scrawled on their message galleon with his wand. 

“Where?”

The coin grew warm as he held it. “Palmistry.”

It meant she was on the same side of the library as Montague. Draco slinked after them, spying on Montague from behind bookshelves. Montague drew closer and closer to the palmistry section, as if he knew she was there. Watching from around the corner of a pillar, Draco saw him arrive under the stained glass window coloured to look like a massive human hand against the dark night sky outside.

Draco couldn’t see Hermione anywhere, but neither could Montague. He mashed his hands against the bookshelves, muttering threats and obscenities. It was infuriating, but Draco had to calm down and think. Odds were Hermione hadn’t had time to cast a Disillusionment spell on herself, but if she had, and she was standing obscured from view against the books, Montague would be grabbing handfuls of her any moment. 

Draco’s lip curled, the furious vibration in his throat rising to an almost audible growl. No. Draco still had the quaffle, shrunken in the pocket of his robes. He restored it to size and threw it as far as he could, over the tops of the shelves, between the chandeliers, toward the other end of the library. It crashed somewhere out of sight. 

Pince let out a squawk, and Montague dropped his hands from the palmistry books. He glanced around the area one last time before darting toward the noise.

There was movement on the ground. Hermione was crawling out from underneath a table, tiptoeing away. Draco bolted after her. She gasped in panic, and without turning around, kept running.

In the distance, Pince was accusing Montague of throwing the quaffle. He argued back.

“ -- on official business from undersecretary Dolores Umbridge -- “

“I don’t care if you were sent by Herr Doctor Faustus himself, no quidditch in the library!”

“I’ve told you, it wasn’t me -- “

“Not you? The Slytherin chaser known for his low regard for rules?”

The pair of them were making enough noise that Draco dared to whisper, “Granger!” as he followed her.

She spun around, her race red, her eyes shining with tears she was not crying. The sight tore at Draco’s heart and he did not pause, reaching her at full-speed, his arms around her waist, all but tackling her and landing the both of them underneath a study table large enough to be a stage. He flicked his wand to arrange the chairs around the table to screen them. He held her face, brushing the pads of his thumbs against her damp eyelashes.

“Are you alright? Did he touch you?”

She shook her head, biting her lip.

Draco breathed out his relief, gathering her face against his shoulder, listening for the loud, angry voices sparring afar off. Pince’s shouting was cut short by the slamming of a door. An instant later, all of the library’s lights went out. She must have thrown Montague out and shut everything down for the evening all in one stroke.

Under the table, Draco collapsed onto his back on the floor. Hermione let herself fall forward, her head on his chest, her own fast, panicked breathing matching his. Together, they quieted their heart rates.

“What happened?” he asked. “It’s not so bad, is it? I thought everything went according to plan, so far.”

She wasn’t ready to speak yet, but she smoothed the front of his robes with her cheek.

His hand dropped into her hair, stroking and soothing her. “Don’t worry. I didn’t hurt Potter,” he said. “I just tripped him and called Umbridge over. She took him away without any more violence than that.”

She nodded against him.

He wrapped his hands around each of her upper arms and pulled her up, until they were face to face in the dark. “Don’t regret it, Granger,” he said. “It’s a good plan.”

She squeaked as she began to speak. “I know. And I stand by it,” she said. “But to see everyone running and scared, and Montague and the rest of them so vicious. And to imagine what’s going on in Dumbledore’s office right now -- poor Harry, still in the teeth of it. And everyone on the list may wind up left here at school without Dumbledore to protect them -- we did that, Malfoy. I did it.”

He squeezed her in his arms so hard he might have heard her crack like a Muggle at a chiropractic clinic. “You had to do it. You were the only one of us brilliant and brave enough to know we had to do it.”

She groaned. “What if I was wrong?”

“So what if you are?” he said, rolling them onto their sides and kissing her forehead. “Everyone takes a turn at being wrong, even you. How many times has flaming Potter been wrong? The Dark Lord is wrong right now, chasing after that dumb prophecy. The Weasleys were wrong about trying to hide Ronald from himself. And Dumbledore, as you have shown us, was wrong about all the sitting and waiting.”

“Was he truly though?” She sounded doubtful, but her voice was losing its whispery quality, its tone and volume rising to normal now the library was closed.

Draco shrugged against her. “Whether he was wrong or not, he’ll make it right from wherever he is now, won’t he? Isn’t that what the noble idealistic children of Dumbledore’s Army believe? Isn’t it?”

She let her lips brush his as she said, “It’s frightening, really, almost devilish how you always know the right thing to say.”

He faked a scoff, his mouth bending into a wicked smile. “Devilish for saying the right thing? I can’t win, can I?”

She tugged at the edges of his smile with her lips, melting them into a kiss. “You might win, eventually…”

A crash sounded -- heavy wood falling on stone. The chairs along one side of the table had been thrown down and out of the way, opening Draco and Hermione’s hiding place.

“Come out!”

The rough, raging voice was Montague’s. Thanks to Umbridge’s authority, Pince hadn’t thrown him out of the library. It was him who had sent her away. 

“I know you’re under there,” he barked. “Come out on your own before I flip this table.” There was a flash as he relit the chandelier overhead.

They were cornered. Draco sighed noisily. “I’ll take care of it,” he whispered to Hermione. “And remember, no matter how I act, or what I tell him, I -- you -- you are my girl and I am mad for you.”

With that he grabbed the table legs and swung himself sideways until he was standing to face Montague.

“Malfoy?” Montague announced as he came into sight. “Why is it always you I find lurking in dark corners when we’re on patrol for Umbridge? Don’t tell me, you’ve got another girl with you this time.”

From beneath the table, Hermione heard Malfoy laugh. “Yes, actually.”

There was a pause as Montague deliberated whether to force this moment into a confrontation. At last, he nodded. “Bring her out.”

Malfoy laughed more quietly. “Like I told you last time: no. I’m entitled to privacy.”

“Not tonight you’re not. Bring her out, or I’m going in after her,” was Montague’s answer. “Umbridge demands a thorough search of this area, so -- “

“I know what Umbridge said,” Draco said, his voice less jovial, sharp. “Don’t act like you didn’t just stand there and watch me catch Potter for her. The rest of them are worthless.”

“She wants them anyway. We need to -- “ Montague stopped mid-sentence, something dawning on him. “Your girl is one of them.”

Malfoy scoffed.

“She is,” Montague insisted. “This isn’t about your privacy, your stodgy Malfoy manners. You’re in here with one of Potter’s Gryffindor slags and you’re ashamed of her.”

“You’ve got that wrong way ‘round, mate.”

“Look, bring her out, or I’ll drag her out.”

Malfoy folded his arms and bent slightly, as if to peer into the dark space beneath the table, like it was the den of a dangerous animal. He gave a low whistle. “I’d like to see you try, frankly. I didn’t confiscate her wand before I took her under there. She’s armed and deadly and already in a foul mood.”

“You’re not impressing anyone, Malfoy. Whoever she is, I’m bringing her to Umbridge.” 

"No, you're actually standing here stalling -- "

"Shut up."

Watching their feet from beneath the table, Hermione saw Montague take a wide stance, as if about to undertake serious work. The light around him changed, glowing red with his magical effort. Above her, the table began to levitate.

“Oh, for stars’ sake,” Hermione called, scooting into the open on her own.

When her head was visible, Montague jumped, spooked, and dropped the table hard against the floor.

Still on her knees, she batted Malfoy’s shin hard enough to make him flinch. “Give us a hand,” she said.

He huffed. “You can do it yourself.”

She scowled as she rose, slapping dust from the knees of her black tights. “You call yourself a gentleman.”

He tossed his head. “A gentleman doesn't waste it on you.”

“Well,” Montague beamed. “The prince of Pure-blood with his muddy little secret.” He looked Hermione up and down. “Can’t say I understand the appeal, Malfoy. Though I have heard that Mudblood girls come with certain -- skills.”

“You could say that,” Draco smirked, swiping his thumb against the corner of Hermione’s mouth, slanting her bottom lip.

She beat his hand away as she jerked her head. “Don’t you touch me.”

Draco responded with that high, mocking laughter of his -- the kind that made him sound like a hooting owl. She hadn’t heard it since fourth year and fought not to laugh back at it. 

Montague joined in instead, mocking along with him. “What does she get out of it?”

Malfoy shrugged. “Bragging rights no one would ever believe. A little amnesty on nights like tonight. Serious help with potions to make sure nothing disrupts her streak of straight O’s on the OWLs. Unconnected nobody like her is going to need marks like that.”

She punched at his arm, genuinely insulted by the idea of her needing to exchange favours for homework help. He bent over, hissing in pain as Montague laughed.

But then Montague was advancing toward her. She retreated, the edge of the table hard against the backs of her thighs. He was reaching, his fingers pinching the fabric of her sleeve. “Say, Malfoy, I’m rubbish at potions, but you’d wouldn’t mind if I were to -- “

“Yes, I would.” Draco had thrown himself between them. Montague’s fingers were no longer on Hermione’s sleeve, and his wrist was clenched in Malfoy’s grip. “It is well-known that I do not share my things.”

Montague wrenched his wrist free. “No matter how filthy they are?”

Malfoy stepped more completely in front of Hermione, cutting off Montague’s view of her. “That’s right.”

Hermione shoved him from behind, sending the boys stumbling into each other’s arms. “Honestly, you two keep arguing about it all you like. I’m leaving.”

Montague lunged after her. “No, you’re not. You’re coming with me. I’m taking you to Umbridge -- “

All at once, there was an enormous crack, like thunder sounding from inside the castle. The room was lit with bright orange light, like a bonfire flaring to life. Outside, a streak of burning, flaming lightning split the sky. And as the rumble of thunder died away, they heard the high, keening call of a phoenix.

Montague jumped. “That’s Dumbledore. He’s -- he’s done a runner.”

“Looks like it,” Draco said. 

“Umbridge -- I -- I didn’t know she was -- Potter,” he stammered. “She only wanted Potter.“

“No, I reckon Umbridge has got more than she bargained for,” Draco said. “And it will keep her plenty busy for the rest of the night. Go back to your dorm, Granger.”

“No, she’s coming -- “

“Montague, you must have missed the part where Pansy found the roster they all signed their names to. Go find her and ask her. Granger has already unwittingly confessed. Umbridge can come pick her up when she’s ready,” he said. He snatched roughly at Hermione’s hand. “I’ll take her back to her dorm.”

“I said, don’t touch me,” she snarled at him.

Still holding her hand, he began to walk. “Don’t act like you don’t love it.”

“I’m not finished with you, Malfoy,” Montague called after him. “Umbridge is going to hear about you and that mudblood slut. You’ll never be on her inquisitorial squad. She’s starting it up right away. But not with you. Not anymore.”

Malfoy turned back for a parting taunt. “Yeah? Why don’t you run and tell her all about me then? Do it while she’s still buzzed from my trip jinxing Potter for her, you useless, jealous git.”

All through the library, Hermione continued to struggle against Draco’s hold on her hand. She kept it up in the corridor outside, up the stairs, past the Gryffindor common room entrance and behind a tapestry. Even in the close, barely private space between the heavy woven drapery and the stone wall, he didn’t let go of her hand, but bent it between them, rubbing her skin between his thumb and forefinger as he stooped to devour her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” he said, pushing her against the coolness of the wall.

“Don’t be,” she breathed back at him, her mouth on his neck.

“But I was so mean,” he said, his head tipped back, his eyes closed. He waited for her to reply but she said nothing, her mouth at work on his throat, her fingers free from his hand now, loosening his tie and collar, clawing for more of him. He answered for her. “And you were so good at being mean right back.”

He felt her smirk against his flesh. “Had loads of practice.” She was kissing upward, returning to his mouth. “Years of scrapping and snipping, fighting to make you feel something for me, even before we -- “ 

Her words vanished into his kiss. His hands were in her hair, tugging gently, baring her neck now. “Stars, Granger. Fight with me any day.”

She lifted her leg to tuck her heel into the back of his knee, the way she sometimes did. It wasn’t enough tonight. While he ravaged the underside of her jaw, his hand rose as if automatically, his fingers closed just above her knee, lifting her leg higher, bringing her closer, holding her up between his body and the wall.

She panted out a soft, breathy laugh. “Are you still a gentleman, Malfoy?”

There was a click as his lips broke from her skin. He slammed into the reality of where he was, and who she was, and that this wasn’t some vivid chemically induced teenaged dream. She was real, precious, important. He squeezed her knee a final time before he let her leg fall. 

He kissed her lips, quickly and just once. “Sorry,” he said. “Sometimes, because I’m mad for you, I can go a bit -- mad.” He leaned his forehead against the crown of her head, her hair moving with his quick breaths. 

She held him in a tender hug, her arms around his ribs inside his robes. “Stop being sorry. Save it for when there’s a need. Trust me, the time will come.”

He cleared his throat, nodding. “I am sorry for the way Montague spoke to you.”

“You’re not responsible for him.”

“Aren’t I?” he said. “Wasn’t it me, as a second year brat who helped bring that word back to Hogwarts?”

She scoffed. “Oh yes, Malfoy. Everyone here takes their social cues from the second years. Don’t flatter yourself. It’s good that you regret it. But don’t hoard all the blame.”

He bent to press their foreheads together, eye to eye. “Now who knows all the right things to say?”

She reached up to tousle his hair, already mussed by the tapestry at his back. “I need to get to the common room. I can’t miss Harry. We need to know what’s happened before we can decide what to do next.”

He held her close one more time. “Hopefully, we don’t do anything. The whole point of this was to force Dumbledore to do something.”

She sighed. “This is my fifth year at Hogwarts. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in that time, it’s that our plans are always glitchy, and there’s always, always something more for us to do.”

\----------------------------

The image in the drawing room fire was sinking back into the coals, the light dimming on the gruesome grin of the Dark Lord. He’d just received word from Severus at Hogwarts. Those Ministry buffoons had pushed the headmaster out of the school. Of course, to truly force him out was beyond their powers, but he had left all the same, in the interest of keeping Potter there.

His protections remained, the castle walls still impervious, Potter and the Malfoy brothers held out of reach for now. But surely Albus had been guiding them, shifting the shiny new pawns through the deadly game he and the Dark Lord had been engaged in for decades now. 

With that influence gone, the chess board belonged to the Dark Lord. Lucius was free to mobilize his boys. Everything was falling into place. Nagini had chased the useless guards away from the Department of Mysteries, the headmaster offered himself to be cut off from the school, and while it was true there was much he could do to frustrate the Dark Lord’s plans now he was at liberty, the Dark Lord and his forces were safe enough in this enchanted manor. 

The most promising development was indeed that circumstances had never been more perfect for Harry Potter to fall into the hands of the Malfoy brothers. They surrounded him at school, as friend and foe, young Ronald sleeping in the bed next to him, night after night. Yes, Potter would deliver the prophecy soon, and by it, his own death.

“Lucius,” the Dark Lord called. “Bring me your sons.”

He dropped to his knee next to the Dark Lord’s chair, still reeling with Snape’s news about Dumbledore’s departure from Hogwarts. Why had Draco helped, blindly following the Umbridge woman? Didn’t he realize how he had exposed himself, and Ronald?

“My Lord, we agreed,” Lucius stammered. “I will lure Potter to the Ministry myself. My sons are young and untried. They only complicate the matter. Allow me to fulfill our agreement without encumbrance. We’re nearly there -- “

“Cease your groveling,” he snapped.

Lucius fell silent.

“Two weeks, Lucius,” he said. “Two weeks and our agreement expires. Two more weeks of subtlety before your sons drag Potter, fighting and howling to the Ministry to obtain my prophecy. In the meantime, young Draco will continue to meet with me, to prepare to take your place should you fail me.”

Lucius was bowing. “Thank you, my lord. Two weeks. More than generous. Yes, you will have it.”

“I will have it,” he said, “or you will have nothing.”


	31. Thirty-one

The night the headmaster fled Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy returned to the Slytherin common room to find the place in an uproar, everyone chattering about the signs of Dumbledore’s departure.   
He was not the last of the prefects to come back to the dungeons after chasing DA members through the school. That was Pansy, slinking in and quickly moving to the mirror over the fireplace mantel to reapply her lipstick.

Draco sidled up beside her. “Your shirt’s come untucked in the back.”

“What? Oh, thanks.”

“It’s not like you to be disheveled, Pansy.”

“Yes, well -- special circumstances.”

He smirked and spoke close to her ear. “Managed to chase down Ronald, did you?”

She smirked back at him as she finished with her shirttail. “Had to go right into the boys’ bathroom to find him. He’s worried sick about Potter getting called in front of the Minister again. You know how tender-hearted he is. Needed some cheering up.”

Pansy had no sooner looked at Draco than she was laughing at him, dropping a hand on his shoulder.

“What?” Draco demanded, facing the mirror himself now. Nothing looked amiss.

“It’s in the back, where you can't see,” she said. “Your hair is all mussed like you’ve been napping.”

“Bloody tapestry,” he muttered, raking his fingers across his scalp.

“Granger needed cheering up too?”

“Yes, actually,” he said, raising his head to catch Graham Montague scowling at him.

As Draco dared to returned his look, Montague seemed to snap with rage, launching himself to his feet and stomping across the rug, his teeth bared as he called, “Oi, Malfoy!”

But just then, the dormitory door opened with a flourish, and Umbridge was suddenly in their midst, Professor Snape at her elbow. There was no need for her to force a cough to get their attention. “Professor Snape, if you please.”

Behind her back, he rolled his eyes and unrolled a scroll. “By order of the Ministry of Magic Dolores Jane Umbridge (High Inquisitor) has replaced Albus Dumbledore as Head of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The above in accordance with Educational Decree and so on and so forth…”

Over her shoulder, she cast a peevish glance at him. But she beamed at the assembled Slytherins, as if expecting something. Draco led a round of applause, Montague fuming that he hadn’t thought to start it himself.

Umbridge raised her hands to accept the applause and call for silence. “Thank you all. Hogwarts could not have taken this great step forward without the efforts of many of you. But there is still much to be done.”

She swept the crowd with her eyes, beckoning Draco forward with one hand. “Mr. Malfoy here managed to intercept a most troubled fellow student this evening. I needn’t say his name, but he was one of the previous headmaster’s particular favourites and allowed to run roughshod over this institution. Well, no more. We are now poised to help him better himself.”

The crowd murmured with the sounds of “Potter -- she means Potter.”

She nodded. “And to recognize Mr. Malfoy’s service to the school, and to inspire you in your own service, he will be heading our newly established Inquisitorial Squad.” With a tap of her wand against Draco’s chest, a small silver letter I appeared fastened to his robes, over his heart. 

Its appearance made him feel sick to his stomach, but he fought to keep smirking as his housemates looked on, some admiringly, some bored, and some, like Montague, furious with jealousy.

“Squad members will have greater accountability to myself, your headmistress. But they will also have greater powers, including the awarding and deducting of house points.”

A disbelieving but not unhappy chatter erupted at this announcement. Over the voices of the others, Montague was shouting in protest. “He’s the leader? Him? But Professor -- “

She rounded on him with bulging eyes and red cheeks, interrupting, snarling, “You will address me as Headmistress.”

Montague recoiled, silent.

She blinked, patting her hair. “I will have respect from my Inquisitorial Squad. See you do not forget, Mr. Montague.” Her face softened as she bounced her wand against her palm. “Now come forward and receive your squad insignia.”

______________________

Classes were useless the next day. No one could think or speak of anything but the fact that Dumbledore was gone. There was a great deal of open resentment toward the new headmistress, and she dispatched her Inquisitorial Squad to quell it. 

This was why Draco was skulking in the Entrance Hall as students gathered for their lunch break, eavesdropping on conversations, waiting to deduct points. When Potter and Hermione happened by, he took a deep breath, and pounced.

It was awful. Acting out a spat in front of Montague the night before had been rather exciting. But leveling vulgar insults at Hermione in front of her friends as she was about to head into the Great Hall for a sandwich and a glass of milk, innocently holding her book bag in front of herself, as if for protection from him, her brown eyes blinking, figuring out what must be happening and looking sadly resigned it -- all of that was dull and dreadful. 

As he did it, Draco watched for Montague, wondering if he’d succeeded in telling Umbridge she’d found him under a table in the library after dark snogging Harry Potter’s Muggle-born best friend. It was only a matter of time before Umbridge stopped interrupting and snapping and let Montague speak. And then -- stars only know what would happen then. 

As yet, there was no sign of him. 

When classes were finally over, Draco left the castle, heading outside to where there were no students for him to hound. He brushed his thumb across the silver letter I on his robes. Umbridge had placed it there with her wand. He wondered if it let her spy on him, and if it was even possible for him to get the thing off without her permission. 

Maybe it didn’t matter. Montague would grass him up soon enough and he’d be off the squad -- or worse. Whatever else happened, he would risk contacting Hermione now anyway. Even if it was all an act, it felt too terrible to leave things as they had at lunch time. He drew the galleon out of his pocket just as a pair of arms flung themselves around his waist from behind.

“It’s only me.” 

There was Hermione, following him, reaching out for him with kindness and understanding. He didn’t deserve it, but he closed his hands over hers and leaned into her backward embrace. 

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She snuggled into his back. “I know, but thank you for saying so.”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said, tapping his fingers against hers with each word.

She laughed and poked her chin into his side, inserting her head beneath his arm. “Not going to turn around and hug me?”

He lifted his arm to make way for her as she circled his body to face him, her eyes now level with his Inquisitorial Squad badge. She touched it with one finger, gingerly, as if it might curse her.

“Careful, I think she may be using it to spy on me,” he said, his hands in the small of her back.

She leaned toward it, waving. “Hello, Professor Umbridge,” she sang into it like a Muggle lapel microphone.

He laughed rather miserably. “I suppose you may as well tell her before Montague does. But mind you call her headmistress from now on. She’s quite fussy about it.”

“I will call her no such thing,” Hermione said. “And about Montague -- well…”

When she didn’t finish, Draco held her away from himself, searching her face. “What about Montague? What did he do to you?”

“Nothing, nothing,” she hurried. “It’s just that he’s had a run in with Ronald’s other brothers this morning.”

Draco groaned. “Of course he has. Ronald didn’t jump in, did he? Loyal git -- ”

“No, there was no need for that. But it seems the twins kept Montague from deducting points from them by tossing him into a broken vanishing cabinet Filch had sitting in the corridor on the first floor. And he hasn’t been seen since.”

Draco gasped letting go of her. “What is a vanishing cabinet doing in Hogwarts? We’re supposed to be safe here and that’s an immense security risk. My parents won’t allow vanishing cabinets anywhere near our house. It is literally an open door.”

Hermione shrugged. “I supposed everyone assumed that since it’s broken, it’s harmless as a wardrobe.”

“But it wouldn’t have always been broken,” Draco ranted as he paced in front of her. “How could Dumbledore let something like this slip by? Irresponsible, that is. Dangerous.”

She huffed. “Maybe not by Dumbledore’s reckoning. Remember how he kept a giant, ferocious three-headed dog on the third floor all through our first year?”

He waved it away. “Broken or not, this cabinet is serious. There’s hardly anything in this world that wizards and witches can’t mend. It might not stay harmless and broken for long.”

“Maybe not,” she said, catching him by both his hands. “But Dumbledore must know where the vanishing cabinet’s mate is, and it must be somewhere safe -- somewhere no one with any ill will toward the school could ever find it. That must be it.”

He sighed. “Well, I guess we’ll know where it leads for certain when Montague turns up again, if he ever does.”

She slipped her arms around him again. “Why don’t you tell Snape about it? He’s Montague’s head of house and he’ll be able to help. Tell Snape someone left you an anonymous tip that he stumbled into the cabinet.”

He snorted. “Hard to bend the truth with my Occlumency teacher.” He held her tightly, raising her onto her toes, burying his face in her hair. “Why is nothing straightforward for us, Granger? Everything is some horrible web, all sticky and tangled and full of spiders and venom. Maybe we should be envying Montague for getting out of here.”

“Right.” She played along, swaying against him. “If you could make that vanishing cabinet take us anywhere, where would it be? I’ve always thought Australia sounded safe and comfortable. Far. Warm. English-speaking.”

He hummed, his closed mouth pressed to her crown as they moved together on the spot, almost dancing. “It’s so weird that you only know one language. Quel dommage.”

She scoffed. “You’re thinking of somewhere posh, aren’t you. Like Paris or Prague.”

He laughed gently against her hair. “No, I was thinking of sneaking back to your parents’ place in town, during the day while they’re both at the surgery. No one home but us and the cat. And I’d lie down on the sofa in the lounge and you’d turn on the telly and lie next to me and let me kiss you while we’d pretend to watch a quiz show.”

She lifted her chin, inviting him to kiss her now, not cozy at home, but standing on a windy hillside beside a chaotic magic castle. It was their first kiss of the day, the heat of the ones behind the tapestry the night before replaced by something else, so sweet and strong -- something they wouldn’t speak the name of yet.

When they came apart, she was still smiling, happy to be caught up in his vision of the pair of them going home. “Not just kissing though. I’d finally teach you how to cook. It’s not unlike potions. You’d be good at it. Some people even think it’s fun.”

He raised one eyebrow. “Do you think it’s fun?”

“No, I hate it. That’s why you have to learn to do it.” She’d answered quickly -- too quickly.

He raised both his eyebrows, his smile broadening.

She was sputtering. “All I mean is -- that is to say -- even in this fantasy where we’ve got a house to ourselves, one of us has to cook and so -- “

“So you’re teaching me, for future reference,” he said. “Granger, did you just propose to me?”

She slapped his chest. “No, I did not.”

He gathered her closer, chuckling at her. “It’s alright if you did. I’ll have to think about it though. You’re so young -- ”

“I didn’t say that! No, don’t think about it. Stop thinking about it right now.” She was laughing through her shouting.

He bent to kiss each of her eyelids. “I will think about it,” he said, “but we don’t need to talk about it again until much, much later.”

She beat her head once against his chest, flinching as Umbridge’s silver letter I pinched the skin of her forehead. “Enough,” she said. “Let’s take this beastly insignia off.”

He grabbed her hand. “No, if it’s jinxed I’d rather Aunt Bella have to deal with it than you.”

Her rosy colour blanched. “You aunt? They haven’t called for you again, have they? You have to tell me, Malfoy.”

“Not yet.” He said. “But they promised they would. And it’s been long enough now, I almost wish they would. The longer they leave me here, the more I worry they’re finished with me, and they’re preparing to call for someone else.”

She nodded. “Someone who hasn’t been learning Occlumency. Someone Severus Snape might not rush back to the manor to protect with his life.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve got to keep them focused on me, away from Ronald.”

\----------------------------

Ever since the war, everyone had known their names, the ones who lived, and the ones who were understood to be dead: James Potter, Peter Pettigrew, Remus Lupin, and Sirius Black. Before the war, Lucius Malfoy had never bothered with them. They were years below him in school, Narcissa’s age, coming to Lucius’s notice first as tormentors of Severus Snape. Not that they ever dared meddle with Severus in Lucius’s presence, the prefect five years older than them.

Now here Lucius was, draped in a plain cloak, dark brown and rough, standing in a March London fog, watching that scarred, shabby Remus Lupin through a plate glass window. Lupin sat in a Muggle cafe, pretending to read a book but glancing up from its pages far too frequently, nervous, like a wolf caught and pacing in a pen. 

Severus insisted Lupin was a werewolf -- it wasn’t just his name. It meant his eyesight would be dim and colourless, but his senses of hearing and smell would be keen. Would he know what a Malfoy smells like? In the gritty London street, full of the Muggles’ burning fuel and greasy foods, their roaring engines, Lucius hoped to pass unnoticed. Confrontation was not his aim. Truthfully, he would prefer there were no werewolves at all in Britain, but he meant Lupin no harm. Not today. What he wanted was information, the benefit of Lupin’s connection to someone else.

Through the window, Lucius spied Lupin taking something from his pocket. It flashed in his hand, like a mirror catching sunlight, even on this foggy day. Whatever the flash had meant, it had Lupin rising to his feet, leaving Muggle coins on the table for his coffee. As he came to the door, he wrapped his head and neck in an enormous muffler Lucius would not have mistaken for the handiwork of anyone else but Molly Weasley. 

Lucius stood at attention, pulling the hood of his cloak more tightly around his face. Lupin crossed the street with metres of him, passing through the black iron gates of a public park. The weather was not at all fine, keeping the greens empty. Lucius followed from a distance, frustrated that this was the third time he’d followed Lupin without learning anything useful about Peter Pettigrew’s old school friends.

At the manor, Lucius had interrogated Pettigrew. His story was quite a drama. After Sirius Black’s escape from Azkaban, Black had reconciled with Lupin. Pettigrew himself was beyond reconciliation -- beyond everything but mortifying subservience to the Dark Lord. He reckoned Black would kill him on sight if ever they met again. 

In the park, Lupin was taking a seat on a wet bench, still waiting, but in a different place. Lucius leaned into a sycamore tree and returned to his thoughts.

Pettigrew seemed a bit pissy at the unfairness of Black being free and forgiven, reinstated in the role James Potter had given him as Harry’s godfather. At least, Pettigrew assumed he would be godfather again, after the way he and Lupin had been carrying on. Most interesting. Potter had a guardian -- a fugitive of a guardian, but someone willing to stand in place of his dead father all the same. He may not be quite as unattached from family life as the Dark Lord suspected.

This was vital. Lucius remembered only too well how the headmaster, without permission from himself or Narcissa, had used Ronald as the treasure for Potter to rescue from the bottom of the Lake during the Triwizard Tournament. When they protested, after the task, Dumbledore had defended it by saying the tournament was harmless. Let him try to tell that to Amos Diggory.

No, Ronald must never be carried off and used to bait Harry Potter ever again. This point was not negotiable, even as Lucius fought to find some way to lure Potter out of the safety of Hogwarts and into the Department of Mysteries, where he could deliver the prophecy. This task was no sporting event. Ronald would be left untouched, and Sirius Black would serve as the lure instead.

Lupin had sunk into a slumped posture as he waited on the bench, but he was straightening up now, watching a large, shaggy black dog, off its leash and unaccompanied, trotting around the end of a hedge. Lucius’s pulse thudded. This was the same dog they’d spotted at Kings Cross on the first day of the school term, the one he had sent Draco to taunt Potter about. 

Thanks to Pettigrew, it was well-known among the Death Eaters that Sirius Black was an animagus, and that his form was a large, black dog -- this dog, the one Lupin was greeting not by whistling or calling, but with a simple nod and, “Hello, chap.”

Sirius Black would know what a Malfoy smelled like. He was Narcissa’s cousin. Her parents had forbidden her to associate with him much, but it was impossible with the pair of them in the same year at school. She saw him most often when he was bullying Severus, and needed an icy Black family glare to chase him off. Deplorable boy.

Lucius cast a spell to silence his feet and his breath as he crept closer to them. Lupin alone was speaking, insipid talk about how Potter was faring at school. Yes, the Ministry and all its Aurors who weren’t busy hunting for Bellatrix and Rodolphus and the rest were watching for Black in the Hogwarts fires. He’d have to receive all news of his godson this way, secondhand. 

News of Potter’s prospects for his OWL exams was not what Lucius was hoping to overhear. What he wanted to learn was the location of Black’s hideout. If he could find it, he could bring Bellatrix and Rodolphus and raid it, drag Sirius Black off, hold him in the Ministry, get word of the abduction to Potter so he would step into a trap as he tried to come to the rescue.

Narcissa suspected Black was hiding at his childhood home, her Uncle Orion and Aunt Walberga’s house, the one that miserable House Elf had come from during the holidays. All Narcissa remembered of the place was a marvelous enchanted family tree woven into a tapestry, and that it was in Islington somewhere. They still hadn’t found it. It might now be unplottable, as good as disappeared. 

Lupin’s voice was getting heated as he continued to sit there like a nutter, talking to the black dog. “No, it’s not going well at all. He’s just not getting it. He’s been told it’s more important for him than anything right now, but he still isn’t making much progress.”

Lucius rolled his eyes.

“I honestly don’t believe it’s Snape’s fault,” Lupin went on, pausing as if he could understand the dog answering back.

“Yes, of course Snape isn’t very nice about it. But that’s the point, I’m afraid. Dumbledore has known that all along. There’s always an element of hostility in Occlumency. Legilimency is violence, simple as that. If there’s no hate or fear involved for a student of Occlumency, have they even learned it?”

Another pause.

“I know -- yes. Some of his current students might argue with you about it, but yes, I will agree it’s likely no one hates Snape more than you do. Harry will definitely have picked up on that too. But that’s your business. You’ve got to sort it, mate. As for me, for his service to me while I was teaching, I consider myself still in Snape’s debt.”

The dog yelped at that point.

“Come now, even you must agree that whatever nastiness Snape shows toward Harry during those lessons, it’s got to be nothing compared to the wicked poison coming at the poor boy’s mind from -- well, from the other source.”

A hush fell, as if they’d brushed too near something cursed. Shivers rose over Lucius’s arms as he leaned closer.

“I can’t say,” Lupin resumed. “I wish it was someone else teaching Harry too. But it was Narcissa Malfoy herself who taught Snape. There’s no one better.”

Lucius’s blood was rising, his jaw clenched at the mention of his own family.

“How should I know? Fear or hatred between Snape and your cousin? Maybe fear her husband will notice the way Snape looks at her. We know only too well his weakness for married women. Now look what you’ve done, dragging me down to your level of pettiness. No, I won’t speak ill of him. We need Snape, and Dumbledore trusts him completely.”

The dog whined and Lupin, for the first time since the meeting started, reached out and scratched at the beast’s ears. “No, I don’t blame you. Though you really are ridiculous,” he chuckled. “I could have come to yours for this chat. You just wanted an excuse to get out for a bit, didn’t you?”

The dog dropped its chin on Lupin’s knee.

Lupin patted its head. “Come on, I’ll walk you as far as the road. You’re less alarming to spot in the street when you’re with a human -- oh, very funny.” 

\-----------------------------------

Drenched with rain and blue with cold, Lucius apparated into his bedchamber in Malfoy Manor.

Narcissa gasped and sprung to her feet. “Darling, where have you been? And what are you wearing?”

He offered a terse explanation of his afternoon spying in London as she helped him remove his cloak and boots.

“Occlumency,” he said. “They’re trying to teach Potter Occlumency.”

She frowned. “Whatever for? He’s hidden away in the castle. Is it because of that Umbridge woman?”

He shook his head. “No, it’s more serious. Dumbledore ordered it, and he’s well beyond school intrigues now. He’s gone off on his own but still says learning Occlumency is the most important task for Potter at this point.” 

Lucius pulled her against his bare chest to warm himself, and to quiet their voices. “It’s him. He may not know it yet, but the Dark Lord’s mind is connecting to Potter’s. It makes sense. That’s how Arthur Weasley was discovered and rescued after the snake bite in the Ministry. Molly refused to tell me how they found him. She would have been protecting Potter. He must have seen it happen through the Dark Lord’s eyes.”

Narcissa stiffened in his arms. “You spoke to Molly after Arthur’s accident?”

“Yes, in the street outside the hospital. She’d nearly lost her husband. She was beside herself with grief.”

“Again?”

“Cissa, please,” he said.

She hung her head, letting the matter go. “About Potter then…”

“Yes, when I realized I need to lure him to the Department of Mysteries, I assumed I’d have to have someone kidnapped in order to get him there. The Dark Lord would have believed the obvious choice is Ronald. I had been working on bringing Sirius instead. But if Potter has visions of the Dark Lord’s mind, we don’t need the risk and strain of actually abducting anyone. All we need is the idea, the dream of them needing rescue.”

Narcissa threw her arms around Lucius’s neck and kicked her feet off the floor, Molly Weasley forgotten for the moment. She kissed his neck and shoulders. “You’ve done it. You’ve all but done it, my darling.”

He shushed her. “We musn’t celebrate yet. Before we tell the Dark Lord, before he lures Potter, we must assure ourselves our own boys won’t interfere. Ronald goes running off after Potter at every turn, and Draco goes running off after Ronald -- ”

There was a sound like a broom colliding with the outside of the bedroom door, followed by a barrage of screeching profanity.

“For stars’ sake,” Narcissa groaned stepping out of Lucius’s embrace. “Just a moment, Bella.”

She opened the door and Bellatrix tumbled into the room as Lucius was slipping into a dry shirt. She snorted at the sight of him. “What are the pair of you like? It's half three in the afternoon."

Narcissa tossed her hair, frowning. "If you don’t like it, don’t come up here. Now what do you want?"

Bellatrix tucked her chin, smiling wickedly. "Just to tell you that Severus…" She picked up a perfume bottle from her sister’s dressing table and sniffed at it, humming as if she had no intention of finishing what she’d been saying.

"Severus what, Bella?" Narcissa pressed.

She smirked. "Oh, he's sent something here this afternoon. Something from the school."

Lucius's posture stiffened. "What did he send?

Bellatrix indulged in a low cackle. "Oh, something very pretty."

Narcissa's eyes widened, her mouth twisting with fear.

Bellatrix went on. "Sent by special request of the Dark Lord himself. You see, he wasn't sure he could trust either of you to deliver it. So he asked Severus. And now he has it, downstairs."

Lucius shoved past her, sprinting out the door.

Bellatrix laughed again as she righted herself. "Oh dear."

"What did he send?" Narcissa demanded.

Bellatrix Lestrange sauntered toward her, a mean older sister taunting her junior. "Did I say 'what' he sent? Oh pardon me, Cissie. I meant to say 'who.'"


	32. Thirty-two

While Lucius Malfoy stood hidden in fog and a cheap cloak, eavesdropping on Remus Lupin and Padfoot in a London park, out on the grounds of Hogwarts castle, Ronald Malfoy led Pansy Parkinson by the hand toward the Lake.

She held onto him with both hands. He was strange today, serious. He kept slipping into this seriousness ever since his birthday, the same week Dumbledore left the school. She clung closer and closer to him as they moved toward the cold, dark water, clamping both her hands around the dip below his bicep as the ground beneath her feet turned wet and wobbly.

“Almost there,” he said. “Mind your footing. It’s a bit swampy, I’m afraid.”

Just as he said it, her foot sank into a waterlogged bit of sod, straight through to the mud beneath. She squealed as the freezing, dirty groundwater soaked through her shoe.

“Oh no,” he said, pulling her onto the high, dry turf on which he stood. “Enough of that,” he said, one arm around her shoulders, the other sweeping behind her knees, lifting her, dirty shoe and all, off the ground.

She laughed at him. “I’ve abused my walking privileges, have I?”

He smirked as he set off, cradling her like he was her bridegroom, striding away from the marshy ground. “Just snuggle in and enjoy it.”

She did, pleased that his seriousness was warming away. It was almost worth the wet foot. Still she teased, “Are you taking me to the lake to leave me as an offering for the merpeople?”

“The last thing I’m doing out here is leaving you,” he said, a little serious again. “No, I’m taking you to see something. We’re nearly there.” 

As he spoke, she brushed her lips along his jaw. 

His steps quickened, as if he was racing against her kisses. “Right, here we are.”

He tipped her to stand on firm, dry ground again. They were in a small lea between the shore of the lake and a copse of paper birch trees waving tiny newly budded leaves. The thready early grass was spring green, not a lawn but natural meadow, unmown and dappled with tiny purple flowers.

“Isn’t this a pretty spot,” Pansy said.

Ronald stood beside her, nodding over the lea. “I looked and looked,” he said. “I wanted to bring you flowers. You know -- to do something special for you, something to show you I like you besides snogging you. I mean, I love kissing you. You know that, but -- flowers are nice too. Aren’t they?”

She laughed gently at his rambling, stepping out of her wet shoe and bending to strip off her sock. “So you got me a whole field of them?”

He braced her arm, steadying her as she worked on her foot. “Yeah, I guess I did. There’s nowhere to buy any at school, and I didn’t feel right about nicking something from the greenhouses for you. And it’s so early in the year, hardly anything is in bloom for me to gather. So I had Neville give me some leads on where to find something, and I wound up here.”

He waved across the lea. “These are some kind of wild violet. I would have picked you a bouquet of them and brought it back to school -- I mean, especially if I knew you were going to get soggy on the way. But they’re so delicate I was worried they’d wilt right away. And they just kind of belong here, where they are.”

On one foot, she hopped in front of him, slung her arm around his neck. “Yes, it’s better that you brought me to them.”

He glanced down at her bare foot hovering over the grass. “Is it really? You know, I’ve seen Hermione dry clothing with a spell before. I wish I could remember how it goes.”

Pansy scoffed. “We don’t need her. Here, hang my sock on that bush. The sun and wind work just fine too.”

He did as she asked, taking her by the hand as he returned. He sank into the grass, legs crossed, and set Pansy in his lap, his warm hands closing around her cold, bare foot.

Her arms wound around his neck again, her dark eyes blinking at him. “What is it, Ron? You’ve been a bit off for days. Is it Dumbledore, your parents, Potter?”

He sighed. “Sort of all that but, not really. Pansy-love, you remember, when we first started all of this, in the room, with the table, and the staring?” 

Of course she did.

He went on. “I came to you looking for a connection to a girl like I’d never had before. And it was easy with you. You’re beautiful as anything, but that wasn’t all of it. You were -- you were already mine before I ever touched you.”

She nestled closer to him, her shoulder against his chest. “That was because I’d liked you from afar for so long. I’d been trailing along behind you for months, even if you hadn’t noticed until Draco stood me up in front of you.”

He tried to smooth her hair with his cheek, but he was old enough now that the short whiskers on his face snagged slightly as he moved. “I hate to think of you liking me and me not noticing. What an awful waste.”

She caressed his rough cheek with her hand. “That’s not something you should be sorry for today. What is it? And if you think I haven’t noticed that you haven’t kissed me yet this outing, you’re wrong.”

He breathed out a laugh, tilting his head forward to rest against hers. “It’s just that, after we spent my whole birthday snogging, I got worried -- worried that I might lose that special personal connection to you. I mean, kissing you is the best, and touching you, when I get my hands up the back of your shirt, next to your skin, it’s -- ”

“Alright, Ronald. That’s what’s not wrong. What’s the rest?” she prodded.

He cleared his throat. “Right. The thing is, left to its own devices, my body would take over adoring you in place of my heart. If I let it, it might become our whole connection, and then we wouldn’t be Ron and Pansy anymore. We’d be Ronald bleeding Malfoy and his latest conquest. And I won’t have that. So I’m doing things like this now.” He plucked a single violet from the turf, traced the slope of her nose with it. “Things that let my heart adore you.”

She pounced, catching him unguarded, knocking him onto his back in the grass and flowers. With a hand planted on the ground on either side of his head, she hovered over him. “Did Granger tell you to say all of that?”

He scoffed through a smile. “No!”

“Oh, come on, Ron,” she said.

“No, I thought of it myself. I don’t want you for a snogging partner -- well, I do but -- you know what I mean. I want you as my girl. My whole girl.”

As he’d spoken, she had been descending slowly toward him, her hair brushing his face on either side of his mouth. He still held the plucked violet between them, still tracing the contours of her brow and cheekbones. 

She wanted to tell him something that could not possibly be true yet. How could anyone keep from saying it when they felt like this? A single word, just one syllable, it was on her lips as she descended toward him. But instead, she said, “Chess.”

His eyes had closed but he opened them now. “What?’

She dropped a light kiss on his cheek. “Teach me to play chess. I already know the basics, but teach me for real, so I can beat an average player.” She kissed him again, just as lightly on the mouth. “Please, Ron.”

“An average player? That’s everyone in the school but me,” he smirked.

She smiled archly in return. “Well, good. You can connect with me over chess lessons, the way I connected with you over kissing lessons.”

He gave a low laugh, lifting his head toward hers. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

She clamped her palm over his mouth, teasing again. “Shouldn’t we go back to the castle and get started? Do you want to play as black or white?”

He made a sound between a growl and laugh as he rolled over, lowering her onto the grass, penning her in with his arms from above. “We can’t go until either the sun dries your sock, or one of us remembers that drying charm.”

She raised both her hands to hold his face. “Alright,” she said as she pulled him close. “We can lie here and admire these flowers until then. Or something like that…”

“Something like that,” Ronald whispered into her mouth as her eyes closed.

\--------------------------------

As Ronald Malfoy was carrying Pansy Parkinson into a meadow of flowers, Draco Malfoy was arriving at Severus Snape’s dungeon office for Occlumency lessons. He hadn’t known if Harry Potter would be continuing now that Dumbledore had gone, but there Potter was, rushing down the stairs almost late and visibly flustered -- red-faced and glowering.

“What’s happened to you?” Draco asked as Potter landed in front of Snape’s closed door.

Potter just shook his head.

Draco raised an eyebrow. “It’s Cho Chang, isn’t it? I saw her hanging around upstairs. Did the pair of you have a spat?”

Potter slung his book bag higher on his shoulder. “Look, Malfoy, just because you’re with Hermione now doesn’t mean you’re welcome to interrogate me in her absence, alright?”

Draco whistled. “Definitely had a spat with Chang.”

“Just open the door -- “

“I haven’t knocked -- “

But Potter had already thrown it open. Snape was inside, standing over the school’s Pensieve, drawing long, silver strands from his temple. The boys’ rash, uninvited entry hadn’t broken his concentration, and he stood still, his back to them as he dropped one strand into the Pensieve, and then another.

Draco was apologizing as he turned to face them. Potter was not.

“Nevermind, Mr. Malfoy,” Snape said. “Shut the door, Potter. Now, I will be testing you myself today, none of your messy, squalling, practicing on each other -- “

The door was opening again, Millicent Bulstrode stumbling in, calling Snape’s name and rushing through an explanation about Montague being back, having turned up stuck in a toilet, or some such nonsense.

“Headmistress Umbridge said to find you, Professor. He’s still trapped and in awful shape. Please, Sir,” she finished.

He seemed alarmed. Montague’s parents had been owling him every three hours since their boy had disappeared, frantic and demanding answers. “Right away,” Snape agreed. He swirled to face Draco and Potter, speaking almost too quickly for them to understand. “Go one round with one another, then sit and write me six inches of ruled parchment on how the other is coming along, complete with what you can learn from him,” his eyes darted to Potter, “if anything.”

He was gone, quick as a great black bat, and the boys stood alone in the office. Draco rolled his shoulders. “You want to come at me first, Potter?”

He sneered. “I’m not interested in you.” Potter weaved past Draco, approaching the Pensieve Snape had forgotten to empty.

“Leave it,” Draco called after him. “Do you even know what that is?”

“Of course I know,” Potter answered. “Do you?”

Draco snorted. “Yes. It’s part of the furniture in my mother’s library.”

“Yeah, good for her,” Potter said.

“Get away from it, alright?” Draco said. “Whatever he put in there, he meant to keep us from seeing.” Draco’s blood ran cold as he said it. Snape was close to his parents. What if the memories he’d withdrawn were more awful Death Eater secrets -- something even worse than Potter’s memory of Draco’s father in the cemetery the night the Dark Lord returned?

“All the more reason to look,” Potter said.

Draco grabbed at Potter’s robes. “Don’t look, Potter.”

He twisted free. “No. This is how, once and for all, I find out if Snape is trustworthy.”

“By being untrustworthy yourself? No, you don’t have to do that,” Draco said, now standing directly behind Potter as he gazed into the flickering flowing silver fluid. “Remember what the Order keeps telling you. Dumbledore trusts him so -- “

“Dumbledore is gone,” Potter snapped. “He’s been gone for over a week. He’s had days to move, to do something. We endangered everyone in the DA to get him to act, and it was all for nothing. It got us nothing but that toad Umbridge as a headmistress.”

“A week is hardly any time at all -- “

“You can do what you like, Malfoy,” Potter roared. “But I’m looking, fast, before he gets back.”

With that, Potter plunged his face into the broad, shallow stone basin.

Draco swore. If he shoved Potter away they’d just end up dueling, and frankly, he wasn’t sure he was a match for Potter anymore. He’d fought off werewolves and Dementors and the Dark Lord himself and Draco just couldn’t be sure he could face someone with that kind of resume. But if he couldn’t stop him from outside the Pensieve, maybe he could interrupt him from inside of it. 

Taking a deep breath, Draco immersed his face in the basin. The stone bottom dropped away, the space it left rippling like water, swirling with misty silver. He heard voices, young voices like his schoolmates,’ and when he turned toward them, there was Potter, standing in the Great Hall watching rows of students writing their OWLs.

Draco scoffed. This was what Snape had been sure to keep hidden from them? The questions from the OWLs, so they couldn’t cheat? And there was Potter, trying to cheat anyway, standing beside a boy with a head of messy black hair, gaping at him as he scrawled away at a parchment.

Let him look all he liked, Draco thought. He was thinking back to his body, sending a message to his muscles to straighten up and leave Potter to Pensieve. But something caught his eye, like the flash of platinum. Snape had deposited two memories in the basin, and this must be the second, away from what had captivated Potter in the school. 

Snape’s second memory was of Narcissa Malfoy. She emerged out of the flash of platinum, the hair at the back of her head bouncing with quick footsteps. Draco watched her as a scene materialized around her. She was younger than Draco had ever known her. Snape was young too, probably in his early twenties, in his prime, almost handsome, and strong enough to carry Narcissa in his arms, bringing her to a bed in a small, grey room. She must have been ill. The light was low and grainy, as if it was barely dawn. He set her down on the edge of the mattress and knelt in front of her, searching her face, his expression scared and open.

“You’re sure?” he asked her in a whisper as she squeezed his fingers between hers. “Even now, at any point -- just say so and…” He didn’t finish, but waited, his eyes wide and black. They were always clutching at each other’s hands, in greeting, in parting, when something shocked her and Lucius was out of reach. Draco never thought much of it. No, it was the look on Snape’s face that made him shiver.

Narcissa nodded at Snape, her eyes rimmed with red, as if she’d just finished crying. “Yes, Severus, I’m sure. There is, however, one more thing.”

Snape’s throat bobbed as he swallowed, nodding back at her.

From the pocket of her dress, she drew a cube, a shrunken book which she restored to its full size without having to use her wand. “This may be the last copy of this book in Britain,” she said. “Do you know it?”

The book lay in her lap and Snape stayed on his knees in front of her, their heads much too close, as he read its title. “I do not,” he said. “But it looks as if it must be on fertility magic.”

She smiled wanly. “Yes. Lucius and I have been through all of it. As anyone who knows about the pregnancies I’ve lost can tell, conception is not the challenge for us. Carrying a baby is where everything goes wrong. By fourteen weeks, all of my pregnancies have withered away. We’ve done everything we can, almost everything that this and every other book I know can offer, and still,” her voice quavered, “nothing but pain and waste.”

She hung her head, her shoulders heaving as if she was about to cry again. Snape moaned in sympathy, pushing a lock of her hair behind her ear, bending closer to her face. “Whatever spell you want, I can help,” he said.

At his words, her head shot up. “Do you mean it?”

“I said I did.”

Her face took on the apologetic pain Draco knew well from times she had steeled herself to ask him for something she considered too much. She was paging through the book. “This one,” she said. “Almost unheard of. No one wants it. No one in the royal or pure-blood families who have handed down this book, at any rate.”

She turned the book in Snape’s direction, so he could read the spell for himself. Draco was stepping forward to read it over his shoulder. 

Gravida Triadum

As he read, the room rippled, something like seasickness washing over him.

Snape finished reading first, turning his face up to Narcissa’s. “This is the one? This spell where a third, like a second father can seal the pregnancy? Keep it from wasting? If the woman is already with one man’s child, but the pregnancy is delicate, doomed, if she takes a second willing man, with this spell…”

“He will preserve it for her -- for them,” she finished. “The spell will safeguard the pregnancy, keep it safe until the child is ready to live without its mother’s body. It’s a rare spell because it can bring the child’s true paternity into question. Only the truly desperate ever use it.”

Snape covered his face with both of his hands, scrubbing his eyes with the pads of his fingers as if to help himself see through a dense fog.

“Please, Severus. It’s the best I can do for Lucius. If there’s anything there, now...”

To Draco’s relief, Snape was closing the book, setting it on the floor. But then he kept his place, on his knees in front of Draco’s mother. “One condition only. No one shall ever know.”

Narcissa gasped. “But Lucius -- ”

“He may never be released from the Aurors’ custody. If he is, we shall deal with it then. But for now -- no one. Especially not your sister, and especially not the child, whoever’s it may be.” Snape’s face remained grave. “Promise me.”

She was taking a breath, about to say more when Snape lifted their joined hands and pressed a kiss to the back of her hand, below her knuckles.

His lips stayed pressed to her skin, his head bowed, until she said, “Yes.”

Draco staggered backwards, no longer able to deny what all the mad talk about fertility spells was leading to. It was leading to him. He had always suspected Snape had a past connection to his mother, something vaguely scandalous, perhaps as a sweetheart from school, someone she used to kiss in dark corridors. But he’d assumed it was something like Snape’s connection to Potter’s mother -- inappropriate, perhaps, but never anything but innocent, especially since his mother was from the Black family while Snape had a Muggle father.

Yet here was his mother, young, her husband arrested, grieving her lost pregnancies, threatened by the possibility of the Weasleys’ having a claim on her future, at war, and looking on with flushed cheeks as Severus Snape turned her palm upward and kissed it, his voice humming, the sing-song tone Snape used only when casting a spell. 

It was beginning. Snape’s hum was forming into words, not the modified Latin they used at Hogwarts but older words, the ancient Celtic language from the Black family fertility book. Snape broke the line of his song to leave a slow, deep kiss on the fine white skin on Narcissa’s inner wrist.

Before he could hear her sigh, Draco barked out a yell, thrashing through the fluid in the Pensieve, the entire scene bending with ripples. He flailed for a door that didn’t seem part of the room anymore. Of course it wasn’t. This was Snape’s memory and his attention was now completely fixed on casting the spell, giving Draco his life, but taking the image Draco once had of his mother -- not perfect but always pure.

Draco cinched his eyes shut, yelling, still yelling as the murky feeling about his head vanished and the dank air of the dungeon hit his face. And he was sitting on the floor of the dungeon office, slumped sideways, head to head with Harry Potter, who looked almost as devastated as Draco felt. They’d both been snatched out of the Pensieve at once, and thrown to the floor by Professor Snape himself.

“Out, Potter,” he snarled.

Both boys scrambled to their feet. Snape let Potter dart around him unimpeded. He had already bolted back up the stairs to the Entrance Hall while Snape blocked Draco’s escape.

“Draco, I’m sorry. You cannot leave yet,” Snape said, each of his hands clasped around Draco’s arms.

“Yes, I can.”

“No, there isn’t time. The Pensieve -- we will deal with all of it, later. But for now, we need to -- “

“No, we don’t.” Draco wrenched his arms free and made for the door. Snape’s footsteps were sounding close behind him, following. Draco’s wand was in his hand somehow, and he turned just enough to cast a nonverbal trip jinx, like the one he’d used to catch Harry for Umbridge.

“Draco!” Snape was still calling from where he lay on his stomach on the floor as Draco vaulted up the stairs, across the hall, and out the doors of the castle.

\--------------------------------

When Ronald and Pansy returned from their walk to the lake, Professor Snape was pacing across the Entrance Hall. “Malfoy!” he shouted at the sight of Ronald. “My office. At once.”

Ronald grimaced openly, pecked Pansy goodbye, and scuffed across the stonework, following Snape.

“Where is your brother?” Snape demanded as he locked the door behind Ronald.

“I dunno, Sir. With Hermione Granger, I’d reckon.”

Snape sneered. “No, he is not. We’ve searched everywhere. None of the portraits knows, none of the ghosts, no one.”

“Did you ask Harry?” Ronald ventured, thinking of the Map.

Snape waved it away. “Potter is off sulking somewhere too.”

“Trouble in Occlumency class again, Sir?” Ronald dared to observe.

Snape swirled full around. “This is no joke, Ronald. The Dark Lord is insisting on a visit from one of the Malfoy sons this evening. He will accept either of you, but Draco is the only one who has been trained on how to conduct himself in the Dark Lord’s presence.”

Ronald’s face blanched white. But he said, “Do it. Send me. You have to. He’ll take it out on my parents if you don’t. You know he will. And Draco’s suffered enough with this already. It’s my turn. Send me.”

Snape thrashed his head, as if in disgust. “You do not know what you’re saying. The Dark Lord will invade your mind, lay bare your secrets, every confidence that fool Potter has ever entrusted to you -- it will all be there for his taking.”

“He’s already in Harry’s head. Isn’t that the point of all this?” Ronald said, gesturing around the office that served as the Occlumency classroom. “And he won’t necessarily walk all over me. Harry says Occlumency is more or less just a really aggressive changing of the subject. I can do that. I can raise a wall of nothing but thoughts of how much I love snogging my girlfriend. That’ll back him off. Trust me, I can do it.”

It was so stupid, Snape slapped him on the back of the head.

“Ow! Sir, let me try!”

The fire in the hearth flashed, roaring higher, a shrill voice calling from it. “Severus! Send the boy or the charm comes off the snake and it starts hunting Malfoys through the house! You have three minutes. Tick tock!”

Ronald choked on the foul smoke that had come with the message. “What was that?” he rasped.

“Your Auntie Bellatrix,” Snape said.

“And the snake -- that’s the big one Harry saw at the graveyard last year. It’s in our house?”

“It is the Dark Lord’s familiar. Of course it is in your house along with him -- “

“And they’re going to turn it loose on my parents if we don’t -- “

“You cannot go. You are not prepared.”

“Tick tock!” the voice shrieked from the fire again.

Ronald wasn’t arguing anymore. He was striding toward the fireplace, feeling on the mantle for Snape’s pouch of Floo Powder.

“Alright, alright,” Snape said. “Be still a moment, and listen.”

In an instant, he delivered the same speech he’d given Draco before his last visit to the manor. 

Ronald shuddered to hear Pettigrew would be there. “Not Scabbers,” he groaned, remembering the rat Percy had given him, the one he’d accepted out of nothing but politeness. It was a bad gift he just couldn’t shake.

“If you cannot face Wormtail, how can you ever hope to -- “

“I can, I can,” he hurried to say.

Snape had just finished turning out Ronald’s pockets for anything that might send the Dark Lord into a rage. He took the square of Weasleys’ Fever Fudge but let Ronald keep the rest. 

“Now, it sounds as if Bellatrix will be at the Floo, waiting as you arrive,” Snape said as he picked a tiny purple flower out of Ronald’s hair. “Stars preserve you, boy.”

Ronald took a handful of powder, and stepped into the fire.


	33. Thirty-three

Ronald Malfoy was going home for the first time since he’d left for school the previous Fall. A small part of him, something slow to change, was happy about it. Another part, something very foolish, was ready for a fight, as if heading into a quidditch match. And yet another part was afraid for himself, and for his parents who had taken his mother’s mad sister and her wicked master into their house. This part knew this trip home might be his last trip anywhere.

Exactly as Professor Snape had predicted as Ronald stepped up to the Floo in his office, Bellatrix Lestrange was waiting at the fireplace at the foot of Malfoy Manor’s grand staircase when Ronald arrived. She wasn’t as careful of the flames as a sensible person would have been, her hair and clothing smoking as Ronald collided with her on the hearth.

She shrieked, not at the near miss with the flames, but at her first sight of the second Malfoy heir. It was a sound of triumph, delight, and cruelty. Her sister did not want her near this -- this boy. But here she was gripping his arms all the same, her hands strong and dangerous as hawk’s talons. “Well, if it isn’t that beautiful bastard’s beautiful bastard. Ronald Malfoy. Aren’t you lovely.”

He tried to step back to a more polite, less insane distance for conversation, his back pressed hard against the stonework of the fireplace. “You must be Au -- Aunt -- “

“No, no, no,” she interrupted, one hand covering his mouth, her flesh reeking of brimstone beneath his nose. “You and I are not related, Ronald. Not by any blood.” She beamed at him as best she could with a mouthful of grey and broken teeth that almost made him sad for her. 

She gripped his arms again, feeling along their lengths. Ronald had good arms -- firm and well-muscled. He knew it. Everyone did, including this creature groping them as she leered greedily into his face. Her lingering resemblance to Narcissa was a sick parody. “At last, a Malfoy who can be admired without the inconvenience of any,” she rose on her toes to speak into his ear, “taboos.”

She bounced back on her heels, cackling madly as he fought not to wipe the wet vapour of her breath out of his ear.

Instead, Ronald spoke to her slowly, calmly, as if to an irresponsible stranger’s near-feral pet. “Erm -- well then, nice to make your acquaintance, Madam Lestrange.” 

He glanced up the stairs, hoping to see his parents rushing to save him. There was no one. Were they locked up somewhere? No, the enchanted old house would never let anyone use its doors and walls, its locks and bolts to imprison its masters.

Bellatrix linked her elbow through his and batted his sternum forcefully enough to make him cough. “Oh, listen to you. So proper and polite.” She dragged her fingertips down the length of his neck, her fingernails biting just enough to leave rows of red lines on his unbroken skin. “Polite is not like your father. Not when it comes to me. Though this jawline…” she left his neck to trace another red mark along his face. “That’s your father. And the nose. How old are you, darling? Same as angel Draco, is it? Sixteen?”

“Y-yes, Madam.”

She whistled. “All grown up.”

“Not so very much -- “

“Well-developed on the outside. That’s for certain. But what of the inside?”

She clamped her fingers around his chin, tilting his face to look down into hers, her eyes wide and wild, focused on his. This was it. This was Legilimency. His head felt like one of the drawers of cards in the library if it had been pulled all the way out and dumped into a cyclone. The rush and blast of it left him helpless as Bellatrix Lestrange kicked and clawed and tore at the cards. His eyes shuttered themselves but it was too late, she was inside, invading, violating. 

He was angry -- furious. This was wrong. He needed something right. What was it? He’d been telling Snape, just moments ago. There was something right that he was going to show these monsters instead of letting them rampage wherever they liked.

Pansy -- Ronald had promised Snape he’d fill his mind up with nothing but his sickeningly sweet, all-consuming memories of being with Pansy. It was a strategy Draco couldn’t use, not when Hermione was Muggle-born and had to be kept out of the path of the Dark Lord’s rage. But Pansy happened to be pure-blooded, someone to flaunt and to satisfy them. Ronald had to find her in his mind even through the heavy traffic of his revulsion for Bellatrix. He had to find Pansy and not Harry.

Anything but Harry -- no, no, no -- no, Harry.

The pressure in his head raged higher as Harry’s name formed in his mind.

No.

Pansy -- Pansy Parkinson on the night of the DA raid, finding him at the end of a long chase, leaping to throw her arms around his neck, so relieved he was safe, and that it was her who’d found him. He’d been miserable, worried about Harry being dragged off by Umbridge, worried about the rest of the DA, his brothers and sister. 

And she’d whispered comfort to him, promising him he was still good. He was still in the right. She'd smoothed his hair from his face, kissed his forehead and eyelids. He had clung to her, grabbed her by the waist, jumping as his fingers touched the warm, silky skin of her back instead of the coarse wool of the waistband of her school skirt. Her shirt had come ever so slightly untucked. She hadn’t even known until she felt his skin against hers. She had gasped against his throat, plunged her hands into his hair as his fingers slipped past the hem of her shirt, up to his wrists, and -- 

“Ah, you’re even more grown up than I could have hoped, Ronald.” Bellatrix’s voice was pitched low now, twisted by the wicked grin through which she spoke. “And you’re more like your father than your mother would have feared, I daresay.” 

She was withdrawing from his mind. Feeling her leave was like coughing a peach stone out of his throat. He was choked and angry, his joints slack as he slumped against the face of the fireplace.

“You may share the rest of your mind with the Dark Lord himself,” she said, straightening her robes. “He has oh-so many questions for you, Ronald Malfoy. You will find he will cut through your dirty little fantasies quickly enough.”

“Madam Lestrange,” a voice was calling down the corridor. 

Ronald cringed at the sound of it: Peter Pettigrew, Wormtail, Scabbers. “Madam, what are you doing with the Dark Lord’s boy?” 

She grit her teeth. “Welcoming him home. I’m his aunt, aren’t I?”

Pettigrew came no closer, calling loudly from the drawing room doorway, making sure whoever was inside heard every word. “Madam, you are first and foremost the servant of our Lord. And this boy is brought here for his purposes before your own.”

She spun on the ball of her foot. “Shut up, Wormtail, we’re coming.”

“Not you, Madam. Send him along unaccompanied, uncoddled by his doting aunt.”

Her lips curled away from her teeth, her eyes narrow with fury as she shoved Ronald from the fireplace. He staggered away from her. “Go on!” she shrieked after him.

Ronald moved slowly, watching her storm up the stairs. If he was lucky, she would find his parents and taunt them about bringing him here. Then he might stand a chance...

He felt anything but lucky as he set off down the corridor, dragging a deep breath into his lungs. The air didn’t taste right, didn’t smell right. There were few things more recognizable to Ronald than the smell of his own home. Some of it was still there -- the scent of the grit wearing off the stone the building was made of, the lingering air of his mother’s signature narcissus flowers, and always a hint of wine. But tonight, there was a stench of musky rot. 

He had come far enough along the corridor to be able to discern the whiskers on Pettigrew’s face. There was no warmth in their reunion, the ratty little man standing aside to let Ronald pass into the drawing room. 

In the dimness of the firelight, Ronald’s eyes followed his nose. There was the source of the new, wrong smell -- a massive green snake. It raised its head, its tongue flicking, tasting the Malfoy in him drifting on the air. It hissed, as if angry about the charm that held it back from attacking Ronald.

“Hush, Nagini,” a high, papery voice said. “Do not vex our host.”

\-------------------------------------

As she did on most evenings between school holidays, Molly Weasley sat at her kitchen table, alone. The long table was empty except for Arthur’s tea sitting under a warming dome, waiting for him to return from yet another late stay in town. The house was quiet enough for her to hear the mice running beneath the front stairs outside.

The sound of movement in the kitchen clock was unmistakable, and she tracked its motion with her eyes, expecting to see one of her adult sons on the move again, as they always were. She’d been thinking of reworking the clock, converting the useless “dentist” sector to “date.” But it wasn’t Bill, Charlie or Percy who was on the move. It was Ronald. His hand had moved from school to home.

Home -- home with that Bellatrix Lestrange creature, the criminal who, not one month ago, Lucius had been scrambling all over Britain to keep Ronald away from. Had she gone? Was Malfoy Manor safe for Ronald again? Molly's eyes were still fixed on the clock when it answered her question, clicking from “home” to “mortal peril.”

Bellatrix Lestrange was still in the house, and perhaps she had not come there alone.

Molly’s chair fell to the floor as she stood, inches of stitches slipping off her knitting needles and onto the table. 

“Bloody Lucius,” she said through gritted teeth, pulling on her coat. In the yard, she took a broom from the shed and stood on the green, wand ready, breathing deeply, fighting to quell her anger, willing herself to be calm so she could do what must come next.

“Expecto Patronum.” 

The shining form of a bird appeared from the end of her wand. It was shaped like a pigeon, like her long lost familiar from her school days, only in the silver light of a patronus, it was a dove. It circled around her head as she spoke a message to it, and sent it to London, to Arthur.

When the dove had flown, she brandished her wand again, turned on the spot and disapparated to Malfoy Manor.

\------------------------------------

An icy cold crept over Ronald as he stood in the doorway of the drawing room. Peter Pettigrew was crowding him from behind, raising one skittish hand to Ronald’s back, forcing him to recoil, lunging forward at the eerie familiarity of his touch.

“Come, Young Malfoy,” the papery voice rasped, speaking to him from his father’s armchair.

Pettigrew nudged, then pushed him forward. Ronald kept his eyes on the floor, looking at nothing but the grey, bone-thin feet on the rug.

“Ah, yes,” the Dark Lord said. “Beautiful child. Very fine. I ought to have expected it but -- I ask you, Young Malfoy, do you know who you are? Who you truly are? Who your parents are?”

Ronald nodded, croaking through a dry throat. “Yes, sir. My father is Lucius Malfoy.”

The Dark Lord hummed. “And your mother? Not our Narcissa, but the woman who gave birth to you?”

“Molly Prewett Weasley,” he said, barely above a whisper.

“Yes,” the Dark Lord answered, a hiss. “I had regretted her status as a blood-traitor, but looking at you now, Young Malfoy, I see there is no unfortunate cross that Lucius Malfoy’s genetics cannot salvage. A foolish, all but useless man as a servant, truth be told, but there may be no finer breeding stud in Britain at this moment.”

He was rising from the chair, coming toward Ronald, intruding into his line of sight. “Heredity, inheritance, bloodlines,” the Dark Lord said. “They fascinate me so. It’s a shame your father hasn’t sired a hundred children by a hundred witches. Ah well, there may still be time for that…”

He paced about the room, keeping to a tight circle around Ronald himself. “But you have an excellence of your own, haven’t you, Young Malfoy. You succeeded where your brother did not, and made yourself the confidante of Harry Potter.”

Ronald managed a small scoffing sound. “He’s my roommate at school along with three others, if that’s what you mean, Sir.”

The Dark Lord laughed softly. “Oh, it’s much more than that, isn’t it Wormtail? My servant here was something of a roommate to you as well, as a rat. And then later, as a man, he saw you stand on a broken leg to defend Potter’s life.”

Ronald was murmuring excuses. “They’d wound us up so tightly over Sirius Black at school that year, we were all ready to kill him.”

The Dark Lord clucked his tongue. “Come, Young Malfoy, it will be easier for all of us if you serve your family, your noble bloodlines properly and tell us everything you can about Potter. One way or another, we will find him out.”

Ronald said nothing, his eyes still on the rug.

“I give you until a count of five to explain on your own accord. After that, I will reap your memories as I see fit.”

Ronald kept quiet. It was coming again, more Legilimency. He was steeling himself against the attack, against his own anger. He was searching for memories of Pansy, in a field of flowers, her torso warm beneath his…

“Five.”

Cold fingers grasped his chin, wrenching at his neck, leveling his gaze to bring his eyes to meet the red malevolence of the Dark Lord’s.

\----------------------------------------

Lucius shouldered past Bellatrix Lestrange, leaving her in his bedroom with Narcissa, sprinting down the corridor to the staircase. She had come to them sneering and talking in clues. He didn’t need to listen to all of her nonsense to know she had forced Snape to send one -- or perhaps both -- of the boys to the manor. 

He’d taken off his wet boots upstairs and came smacking into the drawing room barefoot. Too late, Peter Pettigrew stepped in his path to keep him out of the room. He was inside, standing on the rug with the Dark Lord as he held the face of Lucius’s firstborn son between his long, grey fingers. 

The Dark Lord was speaking, uttering a spell, “Legili -- “

“My Lord!” Lucius called out. “Pardon the interruption. I’m just back from London with urgent news.”

The Dark Lord’s wrist snapped away from Ronald’s face, dropping his chin back into his chest.

“What is it, Lucius?” he spat.

“I have intelligence from Remus Lupin and Sirius Black,” he said, catching his breath. “Potter is studying Occlumency, trying to end a connection with yourself, my lord. There are moments when he sees what you see, feels what you feel. He was a magical witness to the snake’s attack on Arthur Weasley last winter. And if he can see into my lord’s mind, perhaps the reverse is true.”

The Dark Lord turned away from Ronald, facing Lucius. “What is this?”

“There is no need, my lord, to collude with children, to rely on the inferior intelligences of anyone else. Your own is more than sufficient. Potter’s mind is open to yours. It is yours to manage, to manipulate,” Lucius said, taking Ronald by the wrist, drawing him toward himself with gentle pressure.

The red eyes blinked. “Potter saw the Weasley man in the Department of Mysteries?”

“Yes, my Lord. His mother hinted as much to me the morning after the incident. Black and the werewolf confirmed it as I listened in on them talking in town today.” Lucius had moved Ronald fully behind him now.

The Dark Lord had dropped himself back into the armchair, reeling from the revelation. “For how long?”

Lucius shook his head. “That I can’t say. Ronald?”

There was nothing to be lost anymore. “Since the beginning of the school year,” he said.

“The headmaster,” the Dark Lord hissed. “He would have known all this time. He would have been teaching him. That explains…” 

He said no more, and the room hung in silence as Narcissa skidded to halt in the doorway, jostling Pettigrew, Bellatrix following her, chuckling over her shoulder.

“Wormtail!” the Dark Lord snarled. “Summon the others. We must confer. Go.”

The room emptied without a sound, Bellatrix and Pettigrew rushing off to assemble the Death Eaters, Ronald trotting into the arms of his mother. The manor itself slammed the door shut behind the Malfoys as they went.

\--------------------------------

Outside the manor’s black iron gates, behind what would look to passing Muggles like an overgrown hedge, stood Molly Weasley, one of her sons’ old practice brooms in her hand. This house was known to be one of the best magical fortifications in all of Britain. Its gates would certainly not admit her. 

Instead, she would fly over the hedge, over the vast slate roof, hoping to glimpse something through the windows. She’d summon stones to drop against the house’s protective wards, demanding attention, drawing away whatever was threatening her boy, bringing the monsters upon herself.

She was about to kick off into the dark sky when a crack sounded behind her.

“Arthur!”

He sprung forward, catching her arm, keeping her on the ground. “Hang on, Molly. Our Ronald’s in there, is he?”

“So said the clock, yes," she answered, unshed tears in her voice. "I should have brought it with me, I suppose.”

Arthur cracked his knuckles. “Right. No worries, love. Hand us that broom. It’s been years since I’ve had a proper go with old Lucius.”

“Stop your nonsense,” Molly said, yanking the broom out of his reach. “It’s not Lucius who’s put him in mortal peril.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No. There’s no time to waste,” she said, bending her knees to spring up.

“Wait,” Arthur said, his hand closing over the broomstick. “Lucius comes and goes from our house when on urgent business that concerns Ronald. Maybe you’ll find things the same here when it comes to yourself. Try the gates.”

Molly huffed. “Impossible. This old house is as brittle and as fussed about bloodlines as everyone in it.”

“That is exactly my point, dear,” Arthur said. “Maybe it will recognize you as the blood of one of its heirs. Narcissa’s not a Malfoy by blood either, and I’m sure she doesn’t have to beg Lucius’s permission to come and go from here. Try it yourself before you go flying off.”

She sighed, dismounting the broom and approaching the black gates, curving her fingers around the rough iron of one of the long, vertical rods between all the twisting ornate patterns. She stood in the quiet darkness for a moment, waiting with her palm against the cold metal for a sign the house would let her enter.

Molly clucked her tongue. “We’re wasting time -- “

At the sound of her voice, the iron began to grind and creak, shifting aside, revealing a space large enough to pass through. She chirped in surprise. “This is it, Arthur, come along.”

But when she passed through and turned back to reach for him, the gate was closed.

“It’s alright, Molly,” he said, mounting the broom himself. “I’ll give you what cover I can from above.”

She set off, disheartened by the noisy crunch of the gravel beneath her feet. Stealth was impossible. In the dark, the hedges of the manor grounds felt maze-like, as if she was caught in them, at the mercy of a horrible power. High above her, she spotted the glow of Arthur’s wand, and the sparks warning his feet were too near the Malfoys’ unseeable barriers.

Inside the barriers, the house stretched out in front of Molly, its walls high and white in the moonlight. Yellow light appeared as the doors at its centre opened, and a figure, wraithish, perhaps a ghost, drifted down the stairs, searching for the intruder, coming for her.

Molly clutched her wand, and then she heard her own name.

“Madam Malfoy!” she answered back. “Ronald -- “

“You’ve missed him,” Narcissa said. “We’ve just sent him by Floo back to school.”

“Did anyone -- “

“No. He is completely unharmed.”

Molly sank to her knees in the gravel. “Oh, thank the stars!”

Narcissa was tugging at her arm. “Indeed, but you can’t stay here. And get your husband out of the sky before he’s killed.”

“Don’t you take that tone with me when it comes to managing a husband -- “

“Mrs. Weasley,” Narcissa called over her in an imperious voice, “you need to leave. In minutes, the Death Eaters will be converging here for a meeting. You’ll be outnumbered and abused if they find you here.”

Molly lifted her chin to watch Arthur circling overhead. “Right, we'll go. But you must promise me one thing.”

Narcissa glanced over her shoulder, looking back to the house. “Tell me what. Quickly.”

“The pair of you, as Ronald’s other parents, you must come to the Burrow tomorrow evening. The stakes are now sufficiently high that we must stop working at cross purposes where Ronald is concerned. We need to coordinate our efforts to have any hope of protecting him from,” she gestured at the house, “from an evil the likes of that. We are his only chance, his and your Draco’s too. They need all of us, together.”

It rang true in Narcissa’s ears, every word of it. She hung her head, nodding. “Yes,” she said. “Tomorrow. We will be there.”

\-----------------------------------

“Harry, come down!”

From where he’d been flying over the empty quidditch pitch on a broom borrowed from the equipment room in the field house, Harry peered at the spot of dark bushy hair that had to be Hermione. Still reeling from Snape’s memories of James Potter as a teenaged bully, Harry was in no mood to speak to her, especially if she wanted her usual report on how the Occlumency lesson had gone.

“Harry!”

But there was something in her voice that Harry recognized. It was fear. He sighed and tipped the broomstick toward the turf.

“Where is Ronald?” she said without a hello.

“I dunno,” Harry answered. “Maybe ask Draco?”

“I can’t find him either,” she said, her lip quivering slightly. “Snape is searching everywhere for him. Frantic. The -- the people at the manor have sent for him. It’s some kind of emergency. And if they can’t find Draco, Snape is going to have to send Ronald instead.”

Harry’s head snapped as if he’d been hit. “Ronald can’t meet Voldemort. He hasn’t practiced a lick of Occlumency in his life. And even if he had -- “

“I know,” she interjected, her eyes wet and glistening. “Help me find them. You were the last one to see Draco, at your lesson.”

Harry’s face was a horrible grimace. “It didn’t go well today,” was all he was ready to say. “I left early, and they were already rowing before I could even get out of the room.”

She was frowning back at him. “Malfoy was fighting with Snape? That's absurd. About what?”

“I don’t know, Hermione,” Harry said. “Really, I don’t. I was distracted by my own issues. I’ve got no idea what set them off. All I know is, Draco hasn’t been out here. But I’ll check the Slytherin change rooms. Come on.”

From the outside, the fieldhouse looked dark and empty, but they pressed on. Hermione stood behind Harry as he pushed open the door to the Slytherin change room. 

“Hello?” he called.

A long, peeved sigh sounded on the other side of the door. “Potter. Looks like we both had the same idea on how to put that disaster behind us. Didn’t I tell you not to -- ”

“Just shut up and listen for a second,” Harry began.

“Malfoy,” Hermione called, pushing past Harry.

“Granger?”

“You’ve got to come back to the castle. Now.” She gave a quick explanation of the demand from home that he show himself at once or Ronald would be sent in his place.

Draco swore, but instead of tossing his broom back into his locker, he rushed outside with it, snagging Hermione by the hand as he went. She stifled a squeal as he pulled her onto the broomstick in front of himself. His hands gripped the broom in front of her, his body curved over hers, his arms like safety restraints on either side of her as he kicked off, speeding along the steep slope of the hill in the low, dim light, racing back to the castle. 

It was too fast -- terrifying for Hermione. She’d never moved so fast on a broom before, and it left her speechless, her eyes closed, her face turned to hide in Draco’s chest. He pushed on anyway, faster, offering comfort with a kiss on the crown of her head. 

“It’s alright,” he said, his mouth near her ear. “It’s just speed. My speed, and I won’t let it hurt you.”

Unable to answer with words, she answered with a tiny nod against his shoulder.

In an instant, Harry was flying at their side. They were at the castle in less than two minutes, dropping the brooms on the grass, Hermione still wobbly and breathless but eager to keep up with the boys as they crashed through the doors and scrambled across the Entrance Hall.

In Snape’s stairwell, Harry rattled the doorknob. “Locked.”

“Make way,” Draco said, trying it himself. Smooth as greased steel, the magic lock to Snape’s office slid open at Draco’s touch.

Hermione gasped. “How did you -- “

“Later, Granger,” he said, pushing the door open before them.

Green smoke from the Floo still hung in the air of Snape’s office. A heap of tousled black fabric lay heaving on the ground before the fireplace. It was two bodies. One was Snape, pushing himself to sitting, propping up a lolling head of ginger hair -- Ronald.

Draco rushed at them, falling to his knees beside them.

“He’s alright, Draco,” Snape said.

“Yes, no thanks to you!” Draco shouted. “How could you send him? Don’t you understand? If they get him in the end, everything I’ve suffered in his place is for nothing. Nothing!”

Ronald was blinking, sitting up, away from Snape. “Easy, Draco. I’m alright. It was my choice to go. There’s no need to talk to Professor Snape that way -- not at the moment, anyways.”

Harry extended a hand to raise Ronald from the ground as Snape righted himself. Only Draco was left kneeling on the floor. Hermione laid a hand on his shoulder. She called him by name. “Draco, get up. Ronald might have learned something we can use. We need to plan what’s next, before they try something like this again.”

He hung his head, his heartbeat in his ears, but his voice held in a tone he hoped sounded calm. “I’m sorry, Granger. I will plot and plan with you. But not quite yet.”

As Draco rose to his feet, Snape turned to the window though it was too dark to see anything but reflections in it. Draco paused to look at his back, the unreadable tension in the black fabric between his shoulders.

Snape seemed to feel it. “Be sure to be in your dormitory well before curfew tonight, Draco,” he said. “We will talk then.”

Harry waited for Draco’s faithful “Yes, Sir.” It never came. 

Draco didn’t speak a word, squeezing Hermione’s hand once before leaving them there.


	34. Thirty-four

Malfoy’s name appeared in flashing green, lit up on the message board of the Slytherin common room. He wouldn’t have known the summons to Snape’s office had arrived if Crabbe and Goyle hadn’t come into their room, playing a game of stomping on each other’s foot while not getting stomped in return. When Draco rolled over in bed to tell them to shut up, they took care of him by sending him off to Snape. What was he doing in bed two hours before curfew anyway?

He said nothing in reply, just rose from his bed like a sleepwalker, slipping into his dressing gown, the belt dangling untied at his sides. In this unusually disheveled state, his hair mussed from his pillow, he walked through the common room, the rest of his house gawking at him on his way out.

Must have found out about Pansy Parkinson snogging his brother in the Hogsmeade high street. Where was Pansy, anyways?

Draco didn’t care what they thought. They couldn’t have thought any less of him than he currently thought of himself. He’d shouted at Snape for sending Ronald to the manor. But the truth was it was his fault Ronald had gone. If Draco hadn’t run and hid from what he saw in the Pensieve, if he had stayed and listened to Snape, it would have been him who’d met with the Dark Lord today. Draco wouldn’t have almost got his brother tortured and maybe killed, and they might have been able to keep Harry’s connection to the Dark Lord’s mind a secret for a little longer -- long enough to make something good out of it.

Heavy with all of this, Draco trudged out of one dungeon corridor and into another, making a point of creaking open the door to Snape’s office without knocking first.

Snape sat at his desk, his head in his hands. “You’ve come.”

“Yeah, here I am.” Draco stepped inside. 

“Sit. I apologize for the delay. Montague’s parents have been here all evening, getting him settled in the hospital wing.”

Draco slumped into the chair in front of the desk. “Right, of course.”

Snape still hadn’t begun, his head still held between his fingertips, his eyes closed, posture uncharacteristically listless.

Draco cleared his throat. “It’s funny the thoughts we come back to, over and over. I’ve been in bed, angry at myself for what I let happen to Ronald and to Potter. And while I waited for you to call me back here, all I could think of was what I should call you when I saw you again.”

Snape pursed his lips. “Sir will do.”

Draco raked his hands through his own hair. “Will it? Seems a bit cold to me, considering I now know you’re one of my fathers.”

Snape let his hands drop away from his head, landing with a thud on the desktop. “You have one father. You saw the results of your paternity potion yourself. The only paternal colour was Malfoy silver.”

“Please,” Draco sneered. “The potion shows positive results only. Snape is a Muggle name. You’re half-blood, Muggle-born on your father’s side. As far as the potion goes, you would have registered as neutral, causing no colour change at all. How’s that, Professor? Full points for your star potions pupil?”

“Lucius Malfoy is your father,” Snape said with slow, precise articulation, leaning on his desk. “From your mother, you took half of all that you were at birth. Lucius gave you the other half. Whatever I gave -- it was no more than a step in a spell. I’m like an ingredient in a potion that ran its course sixteen years ago.”

Draco scoffed but said, “That spell -- that Gravida Triadum, the pregnancy of threes. I read the page from my family book of fertility magic from over your shoulder in the Pensieve. I know exactly what it entails. Only an ingredient -- I saw her on your bed. You didn’t merely cast a spell. How dare you distance yourself from it? You and my mother, the two of you, you…”

“Once, Draco,” Snape said, his pale face splotched red. “It was only once, during desperate times. She didn’t know if she would ever see you father outside a prison cell again. You wouldn’t have lived if it hadn’t been done. Haven’t you wondered why your mother bore no more children after you?” Snape paused to catch his breath. “It is because she can’t, not without the same spell. But it was never repeated. Once you were born, there was no need.”

Draco’s voice tore out of him in a shout. “So you’ve never loved my mother?”

“Of course I love her,” Snape shouted in return. “As I love your father. As I love you.”

Draco and Snape sat across the desk from each other, their shoulders heaving. Snape’s reply had been immediate, reflexive, given without pause or thought. It was as he always was with students: honest.

The pained, angry look on Draco's face had softened. Snape shook his head, relieved at the change in him but not understanding it. This was what the boy wanted, not for Snape to distance himself from what happened, but to confess how deeply and irrevocably it had affected him. He wanted to know that it meant something.

The silence between them wasn't quite telling enough, and Snape was speaking again. “During the war, I cost the best person I ever knew her family and her life. In that instant, I relinquished any claim, any hope I had of having a family of my own. I can never deserve it. And now, there is nothing to fill that emptiness except for the three of you.”

Draco sat speechless, his eyes shut.

“As for my history with your mother,” Snape went on. “I regret nothing, Draco. Nothing that gives you your life.”

“And you’ve felt this way all my life?”

Snape answered with a single, slow nod. “Yes. And more so since SHE died.”

“Potter’s mother?”

Snape hushed him with a hiss.

“Then how -- “

“I accept that this is difficult for you,” Snape interrupted. “And I hate that you learned of this the way you did.” 

Draco huffed. “You never wanted me to find out. I heard you make her promise not to -- “

“I was wrong,” Snape said, pushing his chair away from his desk. “The time for secrets is ended. The time for living in families torn by crossed allegiances is over. Tomorrow, Molly and Arthur Weasley are holding a meeting of the Order of the Phoenix at their home to discuss Potter’s connection to the Dark Lord, and the mess you and your brother are in now that he has taken notice of you. Your parents will be there as well.”

At the news, Draco hopped to his feet. “They’re changing sides?”

“It isn’t that simple, Draco. There is much to discuss and decide -- “

“Will all of my parents be there? Even you, Sir?”

“Draco, stop. You have one father -- “

The boy swept to Snape’s side of the desk, his dressing gown swirling about him as he grasped Snape by the lapels of his robe. “Don’t keep yourself away from me anymore, Sir. Let me have you as my father, my second, indispensable father. The Dark Lord has my other parents. Please don’t make me face him alone.”

Snape stood, pulling Draco into a crushing embrace. “My boy. I never have. And I never will.”

\--------------------------------

Emotional exhaustion was the order of the day. In spite of her own, Hermione sat on the floor of the Entrance Hall, at the top of Snape’s staircase waiting for Draco. 

“Let him be,” Harry had said when she’d risen from the common room sofa, about to leave Gryffindor Tower even though she was already in her pyjamas. “Get some rest, Hermione. You don’t need to be following him around, coddling him. He’s not the only one here having a horrible day.”

Harry was right about that. Understandably, Ronald had come back utterly knackered from meeting Bellatrix Lestrange and Voldemort for the first time. He was devastated that his father had exposed Harry’s connection to Voldemort’s mind. It didn’t help him to know that he was likely about to give up the secret himself through Voldemort’s Legilimency, and that his father had spared him suffering through it. But he never even got to try to protect Harry, and it irked him. 

Harry had tried to comfort Ronald before he went to bed, pounding him warmly on the back, saying, “Leave it, mate. It’s not like your Dad found out about it from you. And you know I’m rubbish at Occlumency -- so bad I’m sure it was only a matter of days, maybe just a few hours until Voldemort figured the connection out all on his own.”

“And like you said, Ronald,” Hermione had chimed in, “at least the Death Eaters never found out Snape was stabbing them in the back by giving you lessons. They went right to assuming Dumbledore was doing it, and they already know he’s against them, obviously. You saved Snape’s cover. That’s something to be proud of, isn’t it?”

Ronald was muttering his reluctant agreement with all of this when Harry’s mood had suddenly soured again. “Where is Dumbledore, anyway?” he’d said. “Why didn’t Snape have anything to say about him even after Ronald told him all his secrets? He gave us nothing in return.”

“Don’t you see, Harry?” Hermione had said. “If Voldemort is sitting in Malfoy Manor at this very moment figuring out how to see what you see and feel what you feel, Professor Snape has to be extremely careful about what you see him doing or saying, or else. More than ever before, he can’t say anything about Dumbledore or the rest of the Order around you.”

“Stop,” Ronald had moaned. “Enough with all the mad intrigues. I can’t take any more tonight.”

If we all live long enough, there comes a time in all of our lives when our parents bring us more trouble than they save us. Ronald felt like he’d reached that point already, far too early, and there was something heartbreaking about it, making him heavy and weary.

He stood up, stretching and yawning. “Wake me up if Pansy comes by, but not for anything else.”

After Ronald had gone up to their room, Harry stopped pretending not to be in a bad mood. Hermione could sense that something awful had happened in that Occlumency class of theirs. She had felt the darkness of it in Harry and in Draco. Harry wouldn’t tell her what exactly it was. Instead, he kept trying to say his mood was all down to a tiff with Cho Chang.

Hermione was a good friend, but she had her limits. And she knew staying with Harry to talk about Cho Chang, prying away at the real heart of what was bothering him, would not bring her as much happiness as leaving him in the common room to go find Draco.

That was how she came to be sitting alone in the Entrance Hall in her pyjamas and house slippers half an hour before curfew. She held her wand lightly between her fingers, it’s end pointed toward the ground, as she practiced lighting the edges of an old prefect schedule on fire without using her wand at all.

Draco noticed the tiny fire as he came up Snape’s stairwell and into the hall, squinting into the dimmed light of the lanterns. Hermione raised her head at the sound of his slippers scuffing to a halt.

“Malfoy.” She extinguished the flame and was getting to her feet when he took her by the elbow and raised her to stand up into his embrace. “You’re dressed for bed,” she said, her hands smoothing his rumpled hair.

“You too,” he said.

She breathed out a laugh. “Yes. I thought I was tired enough to go to sleep without seeing you first but -- well, here I am.”

“Thank the stars,” he said, his face in her hair.

She hadn’t hugged him in pyjamas since he’d stayed at her house in town, and she’d almost forgotten how soft and close it felt, how strong the traces of his pheromones were in the clothes he slept in, on the dressing gown he wore as he got out of the shower every day. She breathed deeply, filling her head with him, thinking back to that week of living together with her family in London. It was a short time, but vital -- the time when she had moved past simple but powerful attraction to him and into a true, caring relationship. 

But they weren’t in her parents house. “Malfoy, we can’t stand out here in the open. Someone’s going to see us and go running to Umbridge.”

He groaned against her ear and straightened his posture. “Right. Let’s go sit in the dining hall. It’ll be empty and dark.”

The charmed ceiling was specked with stars, some of them falling and streaking, a false moon moving through the sky fast enough for them to see. They sat on the empty Slytherin bench, in the shadows against the wall. She held his hands while he told her about what he’d seen in the Pensieve that afternoon, and what Snape had to say about it.

“Why are my parents like this?” he finished. “First there was all that business about the Weasleys and that love potion pollen, and now I find out Mum can’t stay pregnant without…” He couldn’t say it. “I mean, I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised they’ve got such bad judgment. They’ve got the bloody Dark Lord camped out in the drawing room right now, for the love of stars.”

Hermione twined her arms around one of his, her head on his shoulder. “Was what happened with Snape bad judgment though? It sounds like she put a lot of thought into it. She remembered to bring a book and everything.”

“Granger, not everything we get from books is a good idea.”

She clucked her tongue. “That’s not what I’m saying. What your mum did -- well, you’re here because of it, aren’t you? If we were in your parents’ place, trying desperately to have a baby and getting our hearts broken when the pregnancies kept failing, wondering if all we had was one more chance before you went to prison forever, what would we have done?”

“What -- we -- if we -- trying desperately to -- what?”

She raised her head from his shoulder. “It’s a hypothetical question, Malfoy.”

He smirked. “You just proposed to me again.”

“I did not!”

He placed a hand on his heart. “I’m honoured, but I already told you, sixteen is too young.”

“Malfoy!”

He made a quick dip of his head to kiss her mouth. “I don’t know what Mum was going through. I’ve never even thought about having a baby of my own. But I have thought about having sex, quite a lot, actually. And I can’t imagine what it would take for me to be okay with sharing you with someone else.”

Her face flushed. “Me?”

He smiled against her lips. “Of course you, you daft thing.” As his mouth moved with his speech, he took hold of hers in a soft, wet, fleeting kiss. He kept his place at her mouth as he spoke again. “If you stay with me, eventually...” He nipped another kiss. “You and me...” 

Her hands were on either side of his face, her lips chasing after his. “Oh, definitely.” She didn’t let him back away to speak anymore, her hands gliding up his jaws and into the hair at his temples, her mouth open as he descended on her, promising without any more words to take the rest of her in time.

He moaned into more speech. “Not sharing,” he decided. “I’m too far gone to even see you riding a broom with anyone else, let alone casting a Gradiva Triadum spell.”

She broke away with a crack. “That broom ride tonight was way too fast, Malfoy. I’d like to think I’m not someone who scares easily but…” She trailed off, shuddering.

He smiled. “You’ve watched enough quidditch to know how I like to fly.”

“That’s in a controlled environment, with rules and a set course and a referee. You shouldn’t fly like that cross-country. It's -- ”

“Don’t mother me, Granger,” he said, gathering her up and scooting her into his lap. “You wouldn’t mind it so much if you were a more adventurous flier yourself. Let me teach you,” he said, nuzzling at the hollow below her ear. “Come with me, just like you did tonight, every day until it's second nature to you. You need to be eased into that kind of intense ride.”

She gave a gentle shove against his sternum. “Stop trying to make it sound like debauchery.”

“What’s wrong with debauchery?” he smirked against her skin.

She laughed at him, let him tug at her earlobe with his lips before she sat back and looked him in the eyes. “I’m glad you’re smiling. That’s what I came down here to see. You don’t have to be okay with everything, but I love that you can smile at me anyway.”

He kissed her again, deep and sweet, until the ten minute warning bell for curfew sounded from the hall.

“Oh,” he said, breaking away. “I need to tell you. There’s going to be a meeting tomorrow, at the Burrow with the Order and with my parents. They’re finally going to do something. Though I don’t know what.”

Hermione jumped where she sat in his lap, her mouth fallen open. “Your parents? At the Weasleys?”

He nodded. “Snape told me not to read too much into it, but it’s a bold move on their part. Here’s hoping their judgment is about to begin improving.”

She nodded, still shocked. “Yes. And are they letting you come along? They’ve never let us come to meetings, not even Fred and George and they’re practically adults themselves.”

Draco shrugged. “No, I don’t think so. Snape said Potter can’t even know about the meeting.”

Hermione winced. Harry keenly resented having secrets kept from him. And now she was one of the people keeping them. All the same, she agreed. “No, I suppose he can’t. Not with Voldemort able to see what he sees. This is going to be so hard on him. But if Voldemort finds out your parents aren’t so very on his side...”

“We’ll all be dead,” Draco finished.

She shuddered in his arms. “What about Ronald? What can he know about all this?”

Draco hummed. “I think he needs to know about all his parents getting together. Either one of us can tell him, as soon as we get the chance. But we can wait, maybe forever, to let him know about Gravida Triadum.”

\----------------------------------

Arthur Weasley stood in front of the mirror in his bedroom, tying and re-tying the ascot at his throat.

“Why bother with that?” Molly said, pausing as she was about to rush past the open doorway. “We’re in our own home in the middle of the week. No one is going to expect us to be dressed up.”

Arthur squinted at his reflection, dusting his nose. “He’ll be all fancied up though, won’t he? We’ve been in that man’s acquaintance since we were all eleven years old and we’ve never seen him anything but overdressed, have we -- “ 

The question fell awful and unanswered between them.

Molly’s face flamed red, mortified as she remembered the under- and overdressed states in which she’d seen Lucius Malfoy. She had nothing to say for herself, just made a little cough as she rushed off again.

Arthur swore at himself and followed her to the kitchen, approaching her as she stood at the counter setting out clean, empty teacups. He wound his arms around her waist. “Nothing to be nervous about, love,” he said, careful not to disturb her neatly arranged hair. “I’ve already gone and stuck my foot in my mouth for the evening while it was still just you and me here. Now that I’ve got it over with, the rest of the night should go smoothly. Isn’t that right?”

She turned to face him, her arms stretched to close around his neck. She rose on her toes and kissed him. “You’ve done nothing wrong. But thank you, dear. There is no man in the world kinder than my Arthur.”

They were still in each other’s arms when Alastor Moody apparated into their kitchen without a sound. At the sight of the Weasleys standing nose to nose, whispering sweetly to each other, Moody announced himself with a disapproving grunt and noisily pulled out a chair to sit at the table. At the same moment, the Floo flared to life as Kingsley Shacklebolt stepped through the fireplace. In the hallway, Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks were letting themselves in the front door. It had just clicked closed as the final apparation sounded, that of Severus Snape.

“Oh,” said Molly, stepping away from her husband. “Well, isn’t this nice. Everyone arriving right on time.”

“Everyone?” Moody barked, his eye spinning to survey the room. “If this is everyone, does that mean the Malfoys are no-shows?”

“Give it time, Alastor,” Kingsley urged. “I’ve just cleared the Floo myself. They would have had to wait for me.”

“Sure hope they’re coming,” Tonks said. “That’s my Auntie, you know. The one who isn’t a mad fugitive, I mean.”

Moody was grunting again. “Well, what’s a wizard gathering in this country without some estranged family drama?”

Remus patted Tonks hard on the shoulder. “When was the last time you met up with Aunt Narcissa?”

She snorted. “Met up with her deliberately? Never.”

“A-ha,” said Kingsley, his hand at his ear. “Here they come now.”

The Malfoys arrived in quick succession. Lucius was first, stepping out of the fire and into the kitchen with a familiarity everyone found rather unsettling. His eyes went immediately to the face above Molly’s. “Weasley,” he nodded.

“Malfoy.”

Narcissa came next, glancing around the kitchen with an unfamiliarity everyone found rather unsettling. She turned to her hostess. “Molly.”

“Narcissa. Lovely, please sit down.”

Instead of sitting, Moody took a quick, enormous step across the floor, bringing him into Lucius’s face. “So you’ve double-crossed your comrades to be here, have you Malfoy? You wouldn’t turn around and double-cross us right back, would you?”

“Please, Alastor,” Molly said, her hand on Moody’s sleeve. “This isn’t about the war for them anymore. It’s about their children.”

Narcissa nodded. “Thank you, Molly. That is it exactly.” Her eyes roved around the faces of the rest of the gathering, startling a little at the sight of Tonks. When she spoke again, her voice was smooth and composed. “Thank you, everyone, for seeing us tonight.”

“Please,” Kingsley said, taking the meeting back from her. “Let’s all be seated and see how we can help each other.”

Lucius began. “We have been in contact with members of the group known as Death Eaters -- “

“Contact? The Quibbler says you are a Death Eater,” Moody interrupted. “Potter saw -- “

“Let him speak, please,” Kingsley said. Moody was quiet, but he barely kept his seat, vibrating with tension.

“The Dark Lord is hunting for a prophecy made by Sybil Trelawney the year our children and Potter were born -- “

“They know it,” Snape interjected. It was all anyone said about the prophecy. No one would tell the Malfoys that Dumbledore vouched that the prophecy was useless, and it was nothing but a red herring meant to distract the Dark Lord from worse mischief.

Lucius went on. “He wanted to kidnap someone important to Potter to lure him to the Department of Mysteries where Potter could retrieve the prophecy. Our son Ronald, the one we share with Arthur and Molly, was suggested as the lure, and also Potter’s godfather, my wife’s cousin, Sirius Black.”

Again, they all kept silent of what they knew about Sirius.

Lucius coughed. “But none of that was necessary. Before any action was taken, the Dark Lord learned of his connection to Potter’s thoughts and dreams. This spares my son and Black from kidnapping, but it gives the Dark Lord the power to lure Potter with a mere thought, real or false.”

“Does it?” Moody snapped. “Does your dirty lord really know how to slip in and out of Potter’s mind, just like that?”

“I do not know,” Lucius said. “But I assume it will only be a short matter of time before he finds a way.”

“It won’t be that easy, will it?” Remus said, looking across the table to where Snape sat at Lucius’s side. “Harry isn’t defenseless. Not when he’s been learning Occlumency, isn't that right Snape?”

“I have attempted to teach him, yes,” he said. “But now that the Dark Lord may be looking out at me from Potter’s eyes at any time, it is hardly safe for me to continue to do so. It could betray the Order.”

Remus groaned into the table. “It’s been months since you started. What happened?”

Snape pursed his lips. “It will disappoint you, perhaps, to learn that Potter is not as talented as you had always told him he was.”

Remus scowled, his hand closing into the shape of a claw. “How did your other master find out about his connection to Harry?”

Snape’s mouth curved into a truly horrible smile. “That will disappoint you as well. I see you’ve come without your unruly pet tonight, have you Lupin?”

“Enough,” Kingsley said. “Please, Mr. Malfoy, continue.”

Lucius took a deep breath, preparing to share the worst part. “When the Dark Lord plants an image of Black being tortured in Potter’s mind, he wants me to lead a band of his followers to meet Potter at the Ministry, get the prophecy, and bring both it and the boy to him.”

Molly looked like she might be sick. “A boy, the dearest friend of our son -- you wouldn’t,” she said.

“Of course he wouldn’t,” Narcissa said, rather curtly. “That’s why we’re here. We need to find a way to defy these orders.”

“You mean, a way besides simply growing a backbone and tell him ‘no’?” Moody pounced.

“Simply? There is nothing simple about it,” Lucius answered. “Not when the stakes are this high. Not when my children may suffer and die.”

“Gentlemen, please,” Kingsley said, calling for order. “Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy, would you excuse us for a moment, please?"

Arthur stood. “You can wait in my workshop, if you don’t mind. Right this way.”

The Malfoys had barely cleared the room before Moody was ranting. “Typical. Entitled. Expecting us to drop everything and save their kiddies without giving us anything in return.”

“THEIR kiddies?” Molly snapped.

“They’ve hardly given us nothing in return,” Tonks redirected. “The Malfoys have told us where and how the Death Eaters will be making their first sortie since You-know-who’s return. At this point, their numbers may still be small enough that if it goes badly for them, he’ll have to crawl out of his hole and appear himself to intervene.”

Arthur scrubbed his face with his hands. “A mighty public fray -- I hate it, but I’ll be first to admit it may be the only way to force the Ministry to face up to his return and take it seriously. I have to listen to their complacent malarky all day, every day. The only way they’ll admit he’s back is if he pulls half their Ministry offices down around their heads.”

Molly scoffed. “A public fray? So not only do we let them lure Harry into a dangerous ambush, we then involve You-know-who in it? Battle it out with Harry stood there in the thick of it, all but defenseless?”

“He is not defenseless,” Remus said, believing it this time. “If his history proves anything, it’s that. For a wizard his age, he’s formidable.”

Snape sniffed loudly.

Remus went on. “And he is under the special protection of the headmaster.” He paused while the room fell into a pensive quiet. “We can trust Dumbledore not to abandon Harry to this creature. He is engaged in a hunt for something he deems vital to the final result of this conflict and has refused to let us distract him. But if Harry is threatened, Dumbledore will appear. He will save him.”


	35. Thirty-five

Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy sat on weathered wooden stools at a workbench covered in Muggle artefacts in Arthur Weasley’s private workshop. There were grey boxes with antennae and numbers from zero to nine printed on tiny rubber squares, shining silvery rainbow coloured discs that slid in and out of a black box, glass orbs with strands of dark metal twisted inside them. It was one of these that burst into shards between Lucius’s fingers as he handled it.

Narcissa jumped at the sound of the breaking glass.

“We shouldn’t have come,” she said, sliding off her stool to pace between the shelves stacked with coils of red, black, and white wire. “We should have taken the boys and disappeared without a word to anyone.”

“That won’t work anymore, darling,” Lucius said, using his wand to restore the broken light bulb. “The only place in this world where we can be safe and secure on a long term basis is in the manor. But now that Bella and the Dark Lord are settled there, it’s too late. We’re stuck.”

She pounded a fist on the workbench. “I should never have taken her in.”

Lucius clucked his tongue. “Bella was nearly starved to death after all those years in prison. Rodolphus’s femur was pulverized and needed weeks of mending. How could we have turned them away?”

She let out a growl, fierce sounding to herself but sweet to Lucius. “Can’t we get rid of them now? What would it take to make them leave? Could we convince them Potter was alone and unprotected somewhere, waiting to be captured -- or something -- anything?”

Lucius chuckled miserably. “The Dark Lord understands the peril he is in outside our grounds, especially with Dumbledore now at large. He’d send a minion to collect Potter, wherever we said he was. It’s what he’s done all along.” He stood behind her, rubbing her shoulders until her head drooped to one side. “I’m sorry, darling. These people, their order is our best hope.”

“They’re not going to help us,” she said, slumping backward, against his body. “It’s one thing for us to convince Molly and Arthur to work with us, quite another to win over the rest of them. And frankly, the way Severus digs at them, I think he’s doing our cause more harm than good. That Alastor Moody…”

The door was flung open, as if speaking Moody’s name was a spell to conjure him. “You may as well come back in,” he barked at them.

In the Burrow’s kitchen, everyone was frowning into their teacups except for Molly, who was dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, and Kingsley, who was on his feet as if about to deliver a speech.

“Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy,” he said. “Thank you for the information you’ve provided us tonight. We have formed a plan whereby we may help each other.”

Molly hiccoughed into her palm, stifling a sob.

“Please.” Kingsley gestured to the empty chairs next to Snape, and they re-seated themselves as Arthur filled their cups with tea.

“None of us shall interfere in You-know-who’s plan to bring Harry Potter to the Department of Mysteries. In fact, we will make sure Harry makes his way safely and easily through the after hours security and into the ninth level. For your part, Mr. Malfoy, you will meet him there with whatever deputies You-know-who assigns. Harry may resist retrieving the prophecy for you, and may need to use -- some skilful coaxing -- “

“You’re just going to let him get it?” Lucius blurted. “After all this, you’ll just let the Dark Lord have it?”

Moody thrashed uneasily in his chair as Kingsley showed his hand. “That’s right. The prophecy itself is of no matter.”

“That cannot be right,” Narcissa said. “The Dark Lord -- for months, he’s been obsessed -- “

“Cissa, please,” Severus whispered. “Trust them.”

Kingsley went on. “When the prophecy is in the Death Eaters’ hands, members of our order shall appear at the Ministry, and no doubt fighting will commence. We will protect Harry until two other parties appear: the Minister, as called to the scene through Alastor’s connections, and You-know-who himself. You can summon him with the mark on your arm, can you not, Mr. Malfoy?”

Lucius sputtered. “Yes, but then what? We unleash the monster and then we all flee for our lives?”

“Maybe,” Tonk said. “Our goal is not to defeat You-know-who all at once, just to expose him to the authorities so something can start to happen on a nationwide scale to oppose him. No more fighting rumours and conspiracies but a real enemy. That’s the only kind that can be defeated once and for all.”

“Meaning,” Kingsley continued, “that once our enemy is seen and acknowledged by the Minister, this operation will be finished for now, and we may return Potter to the safety of the school. And while You-know-who is engaged in combat at the Ministry, you may return to your home and seal it against him. No one will pass in or out except for your children coming and going to school through the secure Floo network. This leaves our enemy scrambling for refuge, more vulnerable to us, to the Ministry, and to Dumbledore.“

Lucius scoffed. “Dumbledore -- this is where we place our hopes? In a sacked teacher -- “

“A great wizard,” Snape corrected him. “The greatest living, the only one feared by the Dark Lord himself.”

“And still just a man,” Lucius railed in return. “Even if we do escape the Ministry, the best we can hope for is to become prisoners in our home until the end of this conflict, for however many years it may drag on.”

Snape was shouting. “You will stay, and you will stay alive, all three of you!”

“All four of you!” Molly shouted louder than either of them.

“Yes,” Snape agreed, his voice now quiet, his eyes closed. “All four of you. Of course.”

“This is exactly my complaint,” Molly said. “This plan fails to consider our Ronald, his relentless drive to be loyal. He won’t let Harry go by himself.”

“She’s right,” Narcissa said. “He’d fly through fiendfyre to make sure Potter didn’t face danger alone. It’s been true since they were eleven years old.”

“The Granger girl will be the same,” Snape added. “We won’t be coddling one child during a firefight. It will be three at the very least.”

“You talk as if they’re infants. How old are they, sixteen? I say it’s high time they learned to handle themselves at war,” Moody crowed.

The room shouted him down at once, everyone but Remus who stared into his untouched tea, nodding faintly.

“Draco,” Narcissa said. “He has been given a position of power and trust at school by that Umbridge woman. He could use it to prevent any of the other students from following Potter. And if we give him this assignment, he won’t be tempted to come to the Ministry himself.”

Snape cringed. “But then he’d need to be told about this plan while the rest are kept in the dark. It is a grave secret, and it will be difficult for him to keep it from his brother and from -- his friends. And in the end, he might have to rise up and fight them, fight his own brother.”

Lucius waved a hand. “Schoolboy trifles, Severus. You’ve been at Hogwarts long enough to get caught up in them yourself. Draco is not like other students his age. He has been taught to see beyond such things. We’ve been preparing him for a duty like this his entire life.”

Snape grit his teeth. “Yes, by always demanding too much of him. Really, Lucius, you have too little sympathy for him, too inflated a sense of his resilience. He is not you. He is his own self, still just a boy, and I insist you find within yourself some scruples when it comes to pitting Draco both physically and emotionally against his dearest friends.”

Lucius scoffed. “His dearest friends? You mean the Crabbe and Goyle boys?”

Snape sprung to his feet. “If you had any idea -- “

“Severus.” Narcissa had taken his hand. “I know, Severus. But sit down. Please. It can’t be helped now.”

He stood for a moment more, glaring at Lucius over Narcissa’s upturned face. The Malfoys had decided together. He was outvoted. And the Order knew no reason to give his feelings concerning Draco any special weight. No one was on his side. No one was on Draco’s side over Ronald and Potter’s, the good of one boy over that of two. He sat with a crash at the table.

Kingsley cleared his throat. “Are we agreed, then, that this is the best we can hope to do?”

“Not quite.” It was Remus, raising his head for the first time since the Malfoys had rejoined the meeting. “Harry is a minor under the care of his godfather Sirius Black. Especially since we’ve gone to the trouble of getting the Malfoys’ consent, it would be wrong of us to proceed without Sirus’s consent.”

Tonks was nodding. “A formality, but still the right thing to do. There won’t be any problem getting his consent.”

Remus pushed his teacup to the centre of the table. “No, Sirius won’t have a problem, but he will have a condition. I know it. I know him -- know him like my own mind.” Remus sighed. “The condition will be that he, Sirius, be permitted to come along.”

Moody threw his hands up, exasperated by everyone’s dramatic emotional nonsense. Kingsley frowned, one finger tapping his jaw. Snape did not have to feign being beyond caring about anything at this point.

It was Arthur who spoke first, his arm jostling Molly reassuringly. “If that’s how it must be, then that’s how it must be. Might be good to have someone in the group tasked specifically with watching out for Harry. Might actually make it better. What do you reckon, love?”

No one agreed out loud that Molly Weasley’s word would speak for everyone, but it did all the same. She said, “Yes, that will have to do.”

\---------------------------------

So began the wait for the Dark Lord to learn how to plant a thought in Harry Potter’s mind and lure him out of Hogwarts and into the Department of Mysteries. 

In the meantime, under Umbridge, Hogwarts remained a zoo of bad behaviour. A few short weeks after setting off an entire crate of enchanted fireworks inside the school, Fred and George Weasley turned seventeen years old, installed a swamp on an upper floor, un-confiscated their brooms, and quit school in a blaze of glory with the oppressed young masses cheering them on. 

The quidditch season ran its course. Ronald successfully defended Gryffidor to a championship win, Ginny beating Cho Chang to the snitch. To say there were hard feelings would be an understatement. By the end of the week, both Harry and Ginny were decidedly finished with their Ravenclaw romances, and Michael Corner and Cho had found each other. None of the four of them seemed very bothered.

Draco wasn’t bothered about Slytherin missing the cup that year either. With Montague still in the hospital, their chances were already reduced so it was hardly a surprise. But the diversions of school life weren’t bringing him the same satisfaction they used to. After his parents visited him at school during Easter break, he was quiet, vaguely morose, nervous, as if waiting for something terrible to happen.

He only felt like himself when he was with Hermione. With her, he could smile and lay down his restless watchfulness, close his eyes and lose himself. But when she would see him before he saw her, watching him when he didn’t know he was being watched, she saw the strain and sadness in him. And while she hoped it was just the pressure of the coming exams, she felt like something more ominous was vexing him.

It was true that exams were taking their toll on everyone, especially Hermione herself. For anyone but Draco, she was rather terrible company during those weeks, frantically revising and reciting. Draco was inclined to do the same, and they spent much of their time sitting at opposite ends of long library tables studying together, though apart. Late in those evenings, when the rest of the Inquisitorial Squad’s fifth years had worn themselves out and returned to the dungeons for the night, Hermione would migrate down the table, until she came close enough to cover the toe of Draco’s shoe with hers. This was romance during OWLs preparation season. 

In the library, they wouldn’t look directly at one another until it was time to leave, when they’d duck outside, one of them leaving a half minute after the other, and spend the last few moments before curfew devouring one another behind a conveniently located tapestry decorated with finely woven studious fairies reading from tiny scrolls.

“Three weeks of hardly anything but footsie between us,” Draco said as he kissed her face. “It’s got to stop before I end up with a foot fetish.”

“It will stop,” Hermione laughed at him, smoothing the back of his hair where the tapestry was matting it against his scalp. “Two more days until exams start.”

He hummed in anticipation. “And then we switch to doing most of our -- erm, socializing outside in fresh air, somewhere date-like, by the lake or something. But no feet action involved -- well, maybe a little. Like I said, I may be growing fond of it.”

She laughed in her throat as he kissed her.

“And I promised you flying lessons, didn’t I?” he whispered.

She hummed. “I remember it more as you threatening me with them. Is that the same thing to you, Malfoy?”

“Call it what you want, as long as it gets you on my broom.”

“Malfoy!”

That was how they got through exams. 

Unfortunately, the school’s administration didn’t seem at all concerned with students’ exam-time mental well-being. It was during the astronomy practical exam that Umbridge had Hagrid sacked and detained. McGonagall moved to intervene and wound up so badly injured she was sent to St. Mungo’s.

And then finally, when the last of the OWL exams, the History of Magic, was almost finished, it happened. Harry Potter fell to the floor of the exam hall, screaming in fear and pain and something else -- an edge to his voice Draco recognized, the cruel glee of a second, wicked presence in Potter’s mind. 

This was what his father had come at Easter to warn him to look for. It was Potter’s vision of the Dark Lord, the false one that would be planted on purpose to flush Potter out of safety and into a plan the adults refused to explain in detail. All they told Draco was that he must prevent any other students from leaving with Potter.

In the exam hall, the teachers and proctors had just revived Potter and were insisting he go to the hospital wing as Draco rushed through to the end of his parchment. He followed, Disillusionment spell in place, as Potter made his way from the hospital wing to the classroom where he argued with Ronald and Hermione about whether or not his vision of Sirius Black being tortured in the Department of Mysteries was real or a trap.

By the stars, Hermione was brilliant. There she was, exhausted from days and days of exams, but standing up to Potter’s panic, his belligerent frustration, trying to get him to think clearly. She was right. He did have “a saving-people-thing” and it was being used against him. No one had to explain this to Hermione. She saw it right away and wouldn’t be shouted out of insisting they investigate more carefully before tearing off to London.

He loved her. Draco knew it for certain at that moment, watching her through the crack in the classroom door. She was brave and wise and caring and honest and everything he wanted. He wouldn’t tell her now. It wasn’t the right time. They were so young and she was so wise, she might not accept it. But he felt it all the same, like something flexing and glowing with energy, like the very magic inside of him. He loved her.

The flexing halted as Luna Lovegood nearly tripped over him, not noticing him through his spell as she and Ginny Weasley barged into the classroom to see what Potter was shouting about. Minutes later, there was a new plan to use Umbridge’s fire to test whether Sirius was at home or not. Draco stood back and said nothing as Hermione led everyone out of the classroom. 

It was time for Draco to step out of hiding, to assemble the rest of the Inquisitorial Squad and stop Ronald and Hermione from following Potter into town. As he ran to the Slytherin dormitory, he remembered his father’s words. “You may trust that I am not speaking with undue dramatics when I tell you that if you cherish your brother and your friends, you will not let them leave Hogwarts with Potter. Whatever it takes, Draco. Do not let them go.”

Potter’s head was still in Umbridge’s fire when the Inquisitorial Squad came charging into the office. Umbridge had turned up all on her own, alerted by the new, more sensitive alarms on her office door and Floo. It was her who hauled Potter out of the flames. 

Draco and the squad disarmed Harry and Hermione and held Ronald, Neville, Ginny, and Luna while Umbridge raged and fumed, hurling accusations of Potter being in league with Dumbledore. Threats of Veritaserum, Cruciatus curses -- there was nothing she wasn’t furious and desperate enough to try in the hopes of finding out where Dumbledore had gone and why Potter had been attempting to contact him at this moment.

Snape appeared long enough to defy Umbridge’s demands for Veratiserum. He remained completely unfazed as she put him on probation, ignoring her as he nodded knowingly at Draco. Everything must be unfolding smoothly so far. Snape would tell his other father and whoever else needed to know. He was sure of it. 

But now Potter needed to be carved off from the rest of the group and allowed to leave somehow.

Before Draco could think of a way to do it, Hermione was pushing forward with a plan of her own -- some fib about a weapon hidden in the forest. Umbridge leapt at it, greedily, stupidly. She was marching Harry and Hermione at wand-point toward the door, leaving behind orders for Draco and the squad to hold the others in her office until the three of them returned.

Only, Draco knew the three of them wouldn’t return. There was no weapon, and Hermione and Harry would make quick work of Umbrige in the Forbidden Forest before heading off to London, into something awful.

“Headmistress!” Draco called after Umbridge as she was about to leave. “I’ll come along as a guard. Otherwise you’ll be outnumbered.”

She scoffed, insulted. “Calm down, Mr. Malfoy. I should think I can manage two wandless teenagers.” The door slammed itself behind them.

“Right.” Ronald’s voice sounded as soon as the students were alone. “That’s enough, Draco. Get this lunk to unhand me.” He made a vicious twist between Goyle’s hands and jerked himself free. “Give me their wands and I’ll be off. You can come too if you like.”

“No.”

“Fine, suit yourself.” Ronald stepped toward him, his hand extended. “Look, we don’t have time for this. Harry and Hermione won’t have much trouble with Umbridge, but they will be needing their wands. Hand them over. There’ll be no changing Harry’s mind.”

“That’s fine,” Draco said. “Potter can go wherever he wants. But not with you. Not with Granger either.”

Ronald was coming closer, his colour rising. “You don’t get to decide that, Draco.”

“It’s not me. It’s Dad. He made me promise I’d keep you at school, whatever it took.”

Ronald was shaking his head, his hand still extended. “Dad doesn’t understand what’s going on here. He can’t.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure he can,” Draco said, acting powerful even though he’d been backed into a corner of the office. The other members of the Inquisitorial squad kept hold of their prisoners, gawking nervously at the Malfoy brothers. Goyle, whose hands were free now, was quietly stepping up behind Ronald, ready to grab him again if he pounced at Draco.

“Let’s get Snape,” Draco tried. “He can vouch for everything. It’s fine, Ronald. Stay here.”

Ronald scoffed. “Right, Snape. Always on your side, he is. No, we won’t be asking him.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” Draco said.

“Then don’t get in our way.”

With that, Ronald made his move, not a blow but the tackle, like one their childhood tussles, only with nothing held back. As Ronald sprung forward to grab Draco, Goyle lunged from behind, catching a fistful of his robes only to cry out in shock, stupefied.

As Goyle fell to the floor, the door of the office came into Draco’s view. In it stood Pansy Parkinson, her wand drawn, her hand shaking slightly after having protected Ronald from Goyle. The moment of inattention when Draco looked away from Ronald to Pansy was all the time Ronald needed to knock him off balance and wrench the wands from his hands.

“No one touch him!” Pansy shouted, brandishing her wand as Ronald scrambled behind her and tore down the corridor.

All at once, the office was a flurry of physical and magical attacks. Draco didn’t stay long enough to join in the fight. He pushed through the scuffling bodies, making his way to the door and into the corridor in time to see a rectangle of sunlight appear afar off, in the Entrance Hall, as Ronald made his way outside.

Draco swore and ran after him. He didn’t know if Pansy was with Ronald or hanging back, waiting like a sniper, ready to jinx whoever followed him. Draco risked it, running down the hill toward the forest. At the foot of the hill, near Hagrid’s empty hut where students were most accustomed to entering the forest, Ronald stood in the path, bent as he kissed Pansy.

Watching them from behind a large purple-leafed shrub, Draco couldn’t hear what they said, but he could tell they were gazing at each other, their hands and mouths moving over each other's faces with a troubled intensity, as if they were taking leave of one another before something difficult, risky, important. It wasn’t long before Pansy kissed him with a fervent finality, then stepped away, toward the school.

Ronald was left alone, peering into the shadows of the forest. Harry and Hermione still hadn’t come out. Ronald stood in the path, tapping their wands together, looking all around himself.

In the office, Ronald had taken Harry and Hermione’s wands but had left Draco with his own. Draco looked at it now, gripped in his hand. He wasn't sure what to do with it. What did his father mean by telling him to do “whatever it takes” to keep them here? Was he supposed to wait in this dense undergrowth to ambush everyone but Potter with a stupefying hex?

No, it wouldn’t come to that. All he had to do was talk to Hermione once she appeared. She had seen through the fake vision. She was still critical, suspicious of all this. She would understand him and stay. She’d make Ronald stay. If only she’d come back.

Glancing the way he’d come, Draco saw a group of people racing down from the school. That would be Potter’s friends after escaping the Inquisitorial Squad. He had until they arrived at the bottom of the hill to settle everything.

Come on, Granger.

In a moment, he spotted her hair bobbing through the tall grey trees. Ronald stood hailing them from the path, waving their wands over his head. They paused when they saw Draco come crashing out of the thicket where he’d been hiding.

“Draco, no,” Ronald groaned. “Let us alone, if you don’t want to help.”

“Will you shut up and listen?” he said.

“Just get on with it,” Potter said, close enough now for Draco to notice the fresh bloodstains on his clothes. “Say it and then we’ll go.”

“This crisis isn’t what it seems,” Draco began. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m almost certain the vision Potter had in the exam is fake. Dad told me to be on the lookout for exactly this sort of thing. And when it happens, I’m supposed to make sure no one goes running off except for Potter.”

“Yeah, well it’s not fake,” Potter snapped. “I’ve just called the person I saw kidnapped and tortured in the vision, and he isn’t at home. They’ve got him.”

“Not being home could mean all sorts of things,” Draco said.

“Not for this person. He’s never away from home.”

“Just say ‘Sirius Black,’ would you?”

“Oh, you’d like that.”

“Will you two stop it?” Hermione said, standing between the boys, a hand on each of their chests. “Malfoy, can you tell us for certain that Sirius hasn’t been taken by Voldemort?”

“Not for certain, no. But -- “

“But nothing,” Harry burst, taking his wand from Ronald. “This is a life and death matter and I can’t take a chance on what anyone thinks they may know about Sirius’s safety. I’m going. You lot can’t tell, but there are thestrals just there. They must have caught the scent of this centaur blood all over me. And just in time for me to ride one to the Ministry. Don’t follow me if you don’t want to.”

“Of course we’re following you,” Ronald said, striding beside Harry.

Draco snarled. “Didn’t you hear what I said? It might be a trap.”

“Of course it’s a trap, one way or another,” Harry said. “That doesn’t mean we leave the bait to die.”

Hermione was turning away, about to follow Potter to where the thestrals must have been. 

Draco’s heart gave a thud so strong it hurt. “Granger, no,” he was saying, stumbling after her as Ronald handed over her wand. “You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? They’re taking advantage of Potter. And he’s falling for it. He's ignoring all reason and falling right into it.”

“That’s why I have to go with him,” she said, turning to face Draco, her eyes shining and teary. “We have to stay with him or his strengths turn into weaknesses. He’s all guts when he’s like this. But what he needs is me for a brain and Ronald for a heart.”

“Hermione, no. Please, I’m begging you. Dad said not to let you go. I don’t know exactly why but -- ” His voice was rising, frantic, pleading. He had come near enough to take her in his arms, crushing her against him, her face hidden in his robes. “Please don’t go to them. I can’t take it. Please...”

She choked out a sob. “Draco, I’m sorry.” She didn’t say anything more, not one word as light flashed from the wand she held between them in his embrace. She had locked his feet to the ground, something Mrs. Weasley had taught her last summer holidays.

He noticed too late. “Granger?” he said as she bent at the waist, walking backward, slipping down and out of his arms.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No!” he wailed after her as she jogged toward where Harry was waiting to boost her onto a thestral behind Ronald. “Granger, no!”

He threw himself forward, falling over his stuck feet into a crouch, clawing at the grass and turf around himself, trying to pull himself free with his hands.

The others had mounted the thestrals and were climbing into the sky. Draco heard the bat-like flap of their wings as he took a breath. He blasted at his own feet with his wand, desperate to unstick himself but not knowing the spell.

“Ronald!” he called, his voice hoarse. “Don’t go!"

His brother looked down at him, Hermione’s head at the back of Ronald’s shoulders, her face hidden, sobbing. “We’ll be back!” Ronald answered as he lurched with the creature beneath him, wheeling around before soaring away. “We’ll all be back. I promise!”


	36. Thirty-six

All Severus Snape saw was Draco Malfoy crouched outside the Forbidden Forest, alone and shouting. Snape had been running down the hill with Potter’s friends who’d been held in Umbridge’s office, but at the sight of Draco’s distress, his speed took on a rash, inhuman quality. He was a blur, a streak of black flying more than running down the slope, crashing to his knees at Draco’s side.

The boy wasn’t hurt, but he was more wild with fear than Snape had ever seen him, ranting nearly unintelligibly and waving into the darkening sky.

“You couldn’t stop them?” Snape said, focusing Draco’s fury on himself, and unsticking his feet from where Hermione had fastened them to the ground as she left him, making her heartbroken flight with Ronald and Potter.

Draco coughed, his voice hoarse. “No, she's gone. They’re gone.”

“How many of them?”

"We need to follow them, Sir -- ”

“How many?"

“Three. Potter, Ronald, and Granger.” Draco snarled loudly, his fists clenched. “Come on, Sir. I can't just stand here useless, like my father.”

Snape flinched. “Enough, Draco. We cannot follow. Your father will be among the Death Eaters to meet them at the Ministry. We can only hope he’ll control the situation, with the Order’s help.”

Potter’s friends arrived now -- Neville, Ginny, Luna all running along the edge of the forest calling for the missing students. Draco and Snape ignored them.

“The Order’s help?” Draco echoed.

Snape scowled. “Yes, the plan is for Potter to be protected and rescued by the Order once the Ministry is forced to stop denying the Dark Lord’s return. Ronald and Granger’s arrival will have complicated that now. And we received word this afternoon that twice as many Death Eaters than first anticipated have been assigned to the mission. The Order is scouring the country for more willing and available combatants. Molly and Arthur Weasley have joined and are trying to contact their grown sons -- “

“Who are barely older than Ronald and me. Let me go, Sir.”

“Not the twins,” Snape hissed in reply. “The eldest ones. And I will not send you. How many children can you expect your father to protect from a horde that not only outnumbers its opponents but includes beasts like Bellatrix Lestrange and Antonin Dolohov?”

Beside Draco, Neville cringed at the mention of Bellatrix Lestrange, his red face suddenly ashy. But Draco’s head jerked with recognition of the final name. 

“Yes,” Snape said, as if drawing strength from Neville’s show of fear. “The man who murdered Molly Weasley’s brothers in the cellar of your Malfoy family home, he will be there.”

Snape had been too honest to be persuasive. His talk about the danger of the Death Eaters was meant to convince Draco he was outclassed and must stay away. Instead, it convinced Draco of how badly he needed to go and help.

“Come on, Sir,” Draco said, tugging on Snape’s arm with both of his hands. “We can’t stay here. They need us at the Ministry.”

Snape snatched his arm free. “And how do I help at the Ministry without betraying the Order? How do I stand up to fight with them while maintaining the Dark Lord’s trust. Espionage is not for the emotional and the lovesick, Draco. It takes the strength to put one’s feelings aside. It takes real love.”

Draco swore, denouncing the Dark Lord, denouncing his feelings. “None of it matters if they die.”

“Draco!” Snape was gripping his arms, shouting into his face. “If I allow you to follow them, I exacerbate the very situation I have remained here to prevent.”

“I can’t just stand here!”

Snape let go of him, spinning in a circle. “The best I can offer is to take you with me to the manor. I was to go there to help your mother.”

“You’re sending me off to my mother!” Draco railed.

“It is no small task,” Snape shouted over him. “She will need to clear out Pettigrew when the Dark Lord leaves, not to mention the snake. And if there are any wounded, they will be brought there for treatment. You are skilled enough now that you may be of some assistance with that. In fact, your immunity to the snake may prove most helpful. As I am neither a Malfoy nor a Black, unprotected by any household charms, the creature may pose a significant difficulty for me.”

“What about us?” Ginny Weasley demanded.

Snape startled at her voice, forgetting she was so close.

“Professor, you said my family is going to fight them, to help Harry. So I should be there too,” she said.

“Certainly not,” Snape roared. “Now return to the castle -- “

“Yes,” Draco said. “Ginny, go back to your dormitory, to Hermione’s trunk, and bring the perfume bottle you’ll find there. I added our family’s essence to it -- the silver ingredient from the potion we made at Christmas. It should protect Professor Snape from the snake. Please Ginny, we share a brother. I don’t trust anyone else who can get into the Gryffindor girls’ dorm.”

Ginny rolled her eyes but accepted, and together, they followed Snape back to the castle.

\-----------------------------

Deep below the immaculate pavements of Whitehall, Harry, Hermione, and Ronald stood in the Department of Mysteries, in the Hall of Prophecy, in an aisle between the high, silent, shadowy shelves, number 97.

Sirius Black was not there. Voldemort was not there. Hermione had been right about Harry’s vision being a ruse, but she took no satisfaction as she realized it. By the light of her wand, she squinted along the aisle, between the towering shelves of glass orbs, as Ronald and Harry read the hand-inked labels. 

They were not alone, there in the darkness. The entire building looked empty, sounded empty, but it did not feel empty. In the sickening quiet of what the young people now knew was a trap about to spring, Ronald spoke Harry’s name, reading it from beneath an orb about the size of a snitch.

This was the object Voldemort wanted, what Arthur Weasley had suffered a near-lethal snake bite to protect, the sham Dumbledore was using as a bluff to distract and confound the entire Death Eater movement.

“Harry, I don’t think you should touch it,” Hermione said as he reached for the misty grey globe. 

But whenever Harry was frustrated or threatened, he became reckless, like he was right now. “It’s got my name on it,” he said, lifting the orb out of its brass setting and weighing it in the palm of his hand.

A smooth, imperious voice sounded in the darkness, speaking from behind a mask glinting with lights emanating from a dozen wand tips. “Very good, Potter. Now turn around, nice and slowly, and give that to me.”

Behind Harry, Ronald gasped. “Dad?”

“Oh, it is, isn’t it?” said a high, mad voice from just past Lucius Malfoy’s elbow. Her face unmasked, Bellatrix Lestrange stepped into the light, delighted with this dramatic development in what she had expected to be the easy mission of taking a bauble from a boy. “It’s another Malfoy. My Malfoy. The one who can be handled with no pesky kinship taboos.”

She was moving past Lucius, toward Ronald, the tip of her tongue wetting her lips.

“Don’t you touch him,” Hermione snapped, stepping in front of Ronald, his head still fully visible above hers.

Bellatrix cackled. “What’s this, Ronald? A second girlfriend? Is this the side girl, or was that the one I found in your mind, hiding in the boys’ toilets with you, your hand all the way up -- “

“Quiet, crone,” Rodolphus barked from the shadows. “We’re wasting time.”

She stomped her foot and spun to glare at her husband.

“Get back,” Harry said, holding the orb over his head. “You all stay away from me and my friends, or I smash this -- this thing.”

Bellatrix cackled again. “He doesn’t even know what it is. Comes tearing in here like a fool after a dream about poor Sirius, and he doesn’t even know what for.”

Harry was stalling. “So what is it then?” he asked, edging his foot toward Hermione’s to signal to her that he planned for them all to run for it.

With a wave of his wand, Malfoy removed his mask and began to explain at length about Sybil Trelawney and July of 1980 and all sorts of other wispy traces of Harry’s history which were actually extremely difficult for Harry to simply ignore. 

But Malfoy himself was distracting. With the rest of his party standing behind him again, none of them could see his expression as he spoke, the look of fear, of apology, of pleading on his face, his eyes locked on Ronald’s. He went on and on, weaving an unnecessarily convoluted story, giving the Order more and more time to find the fighters they needed for the operation not to be a total loss.

“Enough!” someone snarled, interrupting, springing forward to crowd past Lucius in the narrow aisle. The students didn’t recognize him by sight, but he was Antonin Dolohov, more of an animal than ever after being treated like one for twelve years in Azkaban. “Just snatch it from him, Malfoy, you great fancy priss.”

“Patience, Dolohov,” Lucius crooned. “Such a delicate object requires a delicate transfer. Isn’t that right, Potter? So now, let’s hand it over.”

“Dolohov,” Ronald echoed. “Dad, that’s Dolohov. The one who -- he -- “

“You’re holding back for the sake of your boy,” Dolohov sneered. “You’re not fit to lead this mission, Malfoy. You’re not fit for anything but hosting the Dark Lord’s dinner parties. Stand down.”

Lucius tutted. “Holding back for this boy? This rustic ginger disgrace? Son of a blood traitor, sent by the Wizengamot to vex and surveille me as a life sentence? I think not, Antonin. I’d just as soon make him a welcome home gift to my dear sister-in-law.”

Bellatrix was cackling again, a loud clattering sound that trailed into an incantation. “Accio proph -- ”

“Protega!” Harry managed to say before she could finish, shielding himself from her spell, keeping her from summoning the prophecy out of his hand. “Try that again and I’ll smash it!”

Malfoy glared at his comrades. “I told you! Delicate!” he said. “Now Potter, I know you are not unintell -- “

Harry stepped on Hermione’s foot, the signal for all of them to level Reducto spells at the rows of shelves, sending them crashing into a chaos of shattering glass and the droning of seers’ voices. In the dust and ghostly vapours, they lost sight of the Death Eaters and fled deeper into the Hall of Prophecy, rounding a gap in the shelves that were still standing, coming back toward the entrance. 

Outside the hall, the department’s many rooms flashed by them as they ran -- rooms for love, space, time -- all too big, too unknown.

“This one,” Hermione said, skidding to a stop as she yanked open the door labeled “Thought.”

“Hermione, no,” Harry said even as he followed her inside.

The din of shouting and shattering glass was muffled by the closing of the massive wooden door. The Thought Room was empty but for a few desks and a massive tank roiling with dark green fluid.

Ronald pushed at one of the stout, heavy desks, trying to shift it in front of the door as a blockade.

“Stop,” Hermione said. “The door opens outward, Ronald. Blocking it won’t help.”

“Well we can’t just wait in here to be caught,” Ronald chirped back at her.

Harry took the prophecy from his pocket, holding it in the light of the small green-shaded lamps hanging from the ceiling. The lights never went out in the Thought Room. “Should I just smash it? Right now?” he said. “Mrs. Weasley said it was a bluff after all.”

“Yeah, but you saw Dad’s face back there,” Ronald said. “He was stalling. Everyone knew it. And his expression -- he was trying to tell us something. His face didn’t match his words at all.”

“Especially what he said about you,” Hermione said, the words bursting from her as if she’d been suffering with them inside of her. “Ronald, you musn’t believe a word he said about you being a life sentence. He meant to deceive them. There’s something else going on here. They must have told Draco a bit about it to get him to act the way he did at school. But as always, it wasn’t nearly enough.”

“Right, of course,” Ronald said. He took the orb from Harry, tossing it lightly in his hand. “So something’s up, but what? But what does Dad want us to do with this?”

Harry lifted his eyebrows. “If it doesn’t matter if they find it, maybe we should just hide it, or put it somewhere so difficult to get it keeps them all tied up and we can get safely away.”

Ronald grinned. “That’s it.” He hopped up onto the desk left at the base of the tank. Up close, he could see that the tank wasn’t just full of the green liquid. Murky, pearly shapes moved through it, like prowling sea creatures. He extended his arm over the open top, above the waving green liquid. “I’ll tip it in here. It’ll take them ages to fish it out, and it looks like they might have to fight off something nasty to get to it once they figure out it’s in here.”

Before Harry could answer, a thick wet band, like a length of kelp washed up at the seaside, flapped out of the tank and coiled around Ronald’s arm. He yowled and jerked, sending the prophecy not into the green depths of the tank, but shooting into the air. It took every shred of Harry’s seeker talent to scoot underneath the prophecy and catch it before it was smashed on the floor.

Hermione was standing on top of the desk next to Ronald, blasting at the kelp with her wand, fighting to free him. It wasn’t actually seaweed but a tentacle protruding from the base of a disembodied brain which had been bobbing in the tank. Neither the brain nor the tentacle were very big, but they clung to Ronald’s arm with the strength of a colossal squid.

“Harry, help us!”

Maybe it was only a matter of time, or maybe it was all the noise it took to free Ronald from the tentacle, but all three of them were still standing on the desk in the centre of the dimly lit room, completely exposed when Antonin Dolohov burst through the door of the Thought Room.

Ronald was still reeling from the brain attack, doubled over his wounded arm. Hermione turned to Dolohov, her wand aimed, her other hand shoving Harry hard toward the door at the back of the room. “Go!” she said before shouting a silencing spell, stopping Dolohov from casting a proper hex.

Harry was through the door, into the Death Room with its single, towering, whispering archway covered by a drifting veil. He didn’t see Dolohov launch a purple whip-like curse at where Harry himself just been standing, on top of the desk, into the space Hermione had filled when he left. He didn’t know that she had collapsed into Ronald’s one good arm, his body sheltering hers as the Death Eaters sprinted by them, all of them chasing after Harry and the prophecy.

“Hermione,” Ronald called to her as he held her. “Hermione, wake up. We need to go.” Panic was rising, tingling sharply through his fingertips and along the back of his neck. “Hermione!”

“Is she breathing?” It was Lucius, the last of the Death Eaters to find his way to the room. He pressed two fingers against Hermione’s neck, finding the pulse in her carotid artery. “She’s survived it,” he said. “But she needs help. Get her back upstairs, to the Floos, and take her to the manor. By the stars, my boy, what have you done to your arm?”

Ronald balanced Hermione’s limp body over his shoulder, bending her in half at her waist, holding her legs against himself with his good arm. He teetered out of the Thought Room into the Death Room, making a show of running away from Lucius. But no one noticed. Ronald had been expecting to see Harry captured and surrounded by a horde of gloating Death Eaters, but instead he found a battle. The Order had come: Kingsley Shacklebolt, Alastor Moody, Tonks, Lupin, Sirius Black himself, and finally, Arthur Weasley and Molly. 

Ronald made his way painfully, clumsily through the fray, unable to see anything on the side where Hermione hung over his shoulder. There were shouts, Bellatrix’s manic cackling, flashing spells and hexes. He couldn’t see Harry, couldn’t defend himself against anything, but in a moment it wouldn’t matter. He was nearly at the foot of the stairs leading out, back to the lifts to the main hall and escape.

All at once, a seering red light flashed much too close to him. Sound came along with it -- a shriek. It was the worst sound Ronald had ever heard, grief and fear torn from the centre of the earth. He couldn’t stop himself from turning to look toward it.

His father spoke its name. “Molly!”

She had thrown herself in front of a spell meant for Ronald, and now she lay bleeding profusely from a gash that ran from one of her shoulders to the other.

“Ronald, go!” Lucius said, falling to his knees on the floor beside Molly. “Go, get out! Don’t let it be for nothing.”

He hefted Hermione higher on his shoulder and clambered up the stairs, making his way through a fog of tears for the main hall.

Back in the Death Room, Lucius Malfoy was calling across the battleground. “Arthur! Arthur, she needs help. You need to take her away.”

Arthur glanced at where Lucius knelt beside Molly in a pool of blood. He hissed a sharp inhale but couldn’t speak or make any movement toward his wife, not with Harry and the prophecy tucked behind him, three Death Eaters fighting Arthur at once, fighting him for his life. 

Sirius was rushing to help Arthur. “Take her yourself, Malfoy,” he called back, Arthur still under too heavy of a barrage to speak. “Lucius, there’s no one else. We’re outnumbered.”

He looked down at Molly’s pale face, her head tossing, her lips murmuring. He gathered her up and followed Ronald out the door. Ronald -- he would be in the lifts now, about to Floo back to the manor with the Dark Lord still inside. Knowing he couldn’t wait any longer, Lucius pressed his wand to the mark on his arm.

“Stars help you, Potter,” he said.

“Ron,” Molly muttered against Lucius’s chest as he shouldered his way into a lift.

“He’s alright,” Lucius said, sinking to the floor with Molly still clasped in his arms as the box rattled and banged its way up to the main hall. “Be still, Molly. You’re hurt.”

“Yes. It’s cold,” she said.

He held her more tightly, closer to himself, his cheek against the crown of her head. “We’re going to get help,” he said. “You’ll be better soon.”

She had strength enough to shake her head. “No. No, go back for Harry.”

“Hush, Molly. Arthur and the rest are with him.”

“Lucius?” she said as if she had only just realized she was with him.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s just you and me, running away.”

Her hand fluttered, as if she was trying to raise it. He held her fingers in his, both of their hands red and slightly sticky with her blood. She was reaching for his face, and he pressed the pads of her fingers to his cheek. Her voice was low, raspy with pain. “That day,” she said, “when I said our baby would be a monster, and that you were twisted and vain -- “ 

She coughed, a fresh trickle of blood blooming through her robes.

Lucius hushed her. “I know, Molly. You don’t have to speak.”

“You are vain,” she resumed, her voice a whisper now. “But when I said I didn’t care anything for you, it wasn’t true. It has never been true.”

He bent over her head again, a tear falling out of his eye, his lips pressed to her forehead. “Thank you, Molly, for Ronald. He is love itself. And he is all of ours.”

The lift slammed to a halt with much more noise than usual. Lucius rose to his feet, realizing the crash was not the sound of the lift at all, but the clamour of a massive spell set off below them. He shivered as he lifted Molly Weasley and strode toward the Floos.

The Dark Lord had come.

\--------------------------------

They were sitting in the drawing room at Malfoy Manor -- the Dark Lord, his servant Peter Pettigrew, his host Narcissa Malfoy, her son Draco, and his teacher and particular favourite of the Dark Lord’s Severus Snape.

The massive snake sat as she usually did, coiled around the legs of the Dark Lord’s armchair. “What’s this, Nagini?” he rasped. “Are you ill, pretty? I haven’t had to call you off dear Severus at all this evening.”

Narcissa cleared her throat. She knew it was the perfume Draco had given Snape keeping the snake away. She had smelled it on him immediately, brushing her nose against his neck as he came through the Floo. “Severus, however did you -- “

“Draco,” was all he’d said, holding her at arm’s length as the Floo flared to admit her son.

Now, she offered Snape’s excuses for him. “Perhaps she senses my lord’s anxiety over the mission at the Ministry. A faithful familiar can be so sensitive.”

“Oh, I have no such anxiety,” the Dark Lord answered, almost a chuckle. “I troubled myself to give our Lucius an especially inspiring talk before sending him off tonight. He will be most motivated to succeed this evening. Don’t you agree, Draco?”

He could have no way to know anything about his father’s inspirational talk with the Dark Lord, but Draco suspected it was probably more like a list of grisly threats. He nodded all the same. “Yes, Sir.”

“Yes, my lord,” Severus corrected him from where he stood behind the sofa.

“Yes, pardon me,” Draco hurried, “my lord.”

“Ah, you really are a most diligent teacher to this boy, Severus. Almost like family. Isn’t that right, Narcissa?”

Her head bobbed as she swallowed. “Yes, my lord.”

He was chuckling again when he fell abruptly silent. His papery grey lips curling away from his teeth, a ghastly sneered. “They’re calling me,” he hissed, glaring at Pettigrew. “Why are they calling? There is no need for me -- “ He interrupted himself again, clutching his head this time, over his eye as if in sudden pain. “The prophecy!” his snarled, dashing out of the room, the snake unwinding itself from the chair legs to slither after him.

Pettigrew and Snape came along as well, both of them pulling back as the Dark Lord threw the front doors of the manor open, stormed to the end of the lane, and disapparated with a clap like thunder. Snape followed him outdoors, but instead of apparating, he turned a corner, around a hedge, out of sight.

“W-where’re they off to?” Pettigrew said, whinging to himself. “Off leaving me alone here, unprotected...”

Pettigrew was indeed left standing at the foot of the grand staircase. But he was not alone. Narcissa Malfoy had stepped out of the corridor, her tall, fit son at her side. 

“Well, well, Peter,” she said. “Here we are.”

The doors the Dark Lord had left open slammed shut. At the noise, the snake turned and hissed, furious to find no one the household charms would allow her to bite except for Pettigrew, and the Dark Lord had forbidden her to bite him -- for now. 

Narcissa was smiling prettily, tapping her wand against her palm. “The way they’ve both run off, it seems like your master may have had some trouble in town.”

“My master? He’s yours as well.”

“Is he?” she beamed, turning her left forearm up, raising her sleeve to show the pristine smoothness of her unmarked flesh. “No, Peter. This is my house. I am its master. Or, if you’re going to insist on being patriarchal about it, you may consider my son its master.”

The snake drew herself into two coils, one twisted around Pettrigrew’s calf, the other writhing, rearing her head up to a striking pose. With the snake around his leg, Pettigrew’s nose began to twitch. He bared his front incisors, his eyes darting, glassy, about to change. 

Narcissa cast a spell to petrify him, just as he was too far into his animagus transformation to block it, but not so far that he could scurry away.

“Did you know?” she asked him, “When this house was built, in the fifteenth century, it was enchanted with anti-vermin magic. Yes, in six centuries, Malfoy Manor has never had a single mouse or rat. Certainly not a snake. And without outside interference, that magic,” she said, “still holds.”

The doors opened again. Narcissa levitated petrified Pettigrew outside and dropped him hard on his face into the gravel.

Left behind, the snake was livid, freezing in the cold air coming through the doorway, striking at empty air, coiling and snapping.

Narcissa tossed her wand to Draco and backed up the stairs, pushing her sleeves over her elbows again, preparing to rid her house of the snake with wandless magic since Draco couldn’t use his own wand out of school. This was no ordinary snake, but the Dark Lord’s familiar. It would demand both of their efforts at the very least. 

The Malfoys rained spells on the snake. It sparked and spit, striking at Draco, forcing him to the top of the grand piano. At last, it could do nothing but twitch and hiss. Draco took it by the tail, sprinting across the smooth marble tile to the front doors, the snake’s belly dragging with a long, scuffing sound that made him wince all the way. It snapped its jaws at him one final time as he hurled it out into the cool night.

The doors flung themselves closed again as Draco stepped back inside, wiping his hands on his trousers. The snake hadn’t been slimy, but touching it had made him feel filthy all the same.

Now that Pettigrew was gone, Snape was joining them again, coming in through the kitchen. Narcissa had taken her wand back from Draco and was waving it along the lintels of the doorway, as if she was painting them, chanting an elaborate spell, one to strengthen the usual spell that kept intruders out of the manor. If the Dark Lord or the Death Eaters came back now, the way would be closed to them.

No one could come or go without permission except for Malfoy family members and those they brought by the hand with them. Narcissa was sure of it. And that was why she gasped in alarm, clutching at Severus’s hand when the fireplace behind the piano flamed green.

It was Ronald who came through, his arm swollen and oozing, and over his shoulder, behind his back, hung a head of wild bushy hair.

“Granger!” Draco bounded down from the piano, rolling her off Ronald’s shoulder, cradling her in his arms, calling into her face, stroking her cheeks. “Wake up, love.”

“She’s been hit,” Ronald said, shaking his mother away as she reached for his wounded arm.

“Who was it?” Snape asked, bending over Draco to pull Hermione’s eyelids apart, watching her pupils.

“Dolohov. It was purple, formed like a whip out of his wand. She took it right in the chest, under her heart from the looks of it.”

Snape startled. “And she’s alive?”

“Yeah, she managed to silence him before he could say it out loud. Saved her own life, as usual,” Ronald said, his chin shaking, this mother’s compassion for him as she examined his arm shaking his heroism apart. “And -- and there’s -- “

“She doesn’t look saved,” Draco interrupted, feeling Hermione’s cold forehead with his lips. “Mum, leave Ronald for now, please -- “

“Right. My stores are upstairs,” Narcissa said. “Draco, bring her.”


	37. Thirty-seven

Draco Malfoy carried an unconscious Hermione Granger up the grand staircase of his ancestral home to his mother’s bedchamber. Narcissa and Professor Snape ran ahead to assemble the potions needed to counter the curse Hermione had been attacked with in the Thought Room of the Department of Mysteries. Ronald Malfoy did his best to keep up with them, cradling his wounded arm.

“Mum,” Ronald called softly, as if wary of waking Hermione. “Mum, there’s another wounded person coming. She should arrive any moment.”

They stormed through the bedroom door, Narcissa rushing to the medicine chest stashed beneath her vanity. She flung it open, handing vial after vial to Snape. She glanced up as Draco brought Hermione into the room. “Not on the bed. Take her to the chaise. She’ll need to be propped up to swallow all of these.”

“Mum,” Ronald tried again. “It’s Molly. She’s been hurt by some kind of cutting spell.”

“How badly?” was all Narcissa asked, drawing a potion up into a syringe.

Ronald swallowed. “Big pool of blood. Couldn’t stand or speak much. Dad was closest when she fell. I reckon it will be him that brings her.”

“It had better be him. No one else can get in here,” she said, still showing no emotion but stoic concern for Hermione, the patient at hand. Narcissa paused for hardly a moment to look at Ronald himself. “Go to the bath and run some cool water over that arm.”

He obeyed, watching over his shoulder for Molly and Lucius to arrive. It was taking too long, as if something new, something even worse had gone wrong.

Narcissa nudged Draco aside as she took Hermione’s arm and injected the first of the array of ten potions, this one coming through a vein at the inside of her elbow. “She can’t swallow anything in her sleep. It’s too dangerous. She needs to revive, though she will be in pain.”

As the potion hit her bloodstream, Hermione drew in a deep breath. “Harry!”

Ronald came trotting out of the bathroom at the sound of her voice, his arm wrapped in a clean white towel. “He’s with the Order. They came for us. It’s -- it’s alright, Hermione,” Ronald said, though he was near tears again, not truly able to promise her anything was alright, not when Molly was fading away somewhere, and the battle between the Order and the Death Eaters had been far from decided when they got away.

Hermione was too lost in the fog of the curse to notice his hesitation. She did recognize his voice, and managed to moan back at it, “Go, Ronald. Get out.”

Draco took her thrashing head in his hands, hushing her. “You are out. Ronald brought you home. You’re with us, Granger. I know it hurts, but you’re safe.” 

Snape tapped Draco’s arm with an uncorked vial. 

“Here, drink this,” Draco said, raising the potion to Hermione’s lips as she whimpered in pain. “You’ve been cursed and you need this to get better.”

She didn’t seem to understand until the clear, thin liquid, like water, was washing into her mouth. She gulped it down, as if desperately thirsty.

“Good girl,” Narcissa cooed. “Eight more potions to go. The next comes with wandwork and a poultice over the point of impact.”

Narcissa's hands were on the hem of Hermione’s shirt when the room shook with the crack of an apparation. Standing on the rug after apparating from the fireplace downstairs was Lucius, covered in blood from the bright red fingerprints on his cheek and jaw to the rusty stains on his shoes. In his arms was Molly Weasley, still and cold.

Snape rushed to take her from Lucius, pivoting to lay her on the bed, tearing her robe open to see the gash torn in her flesh from one of her shoulders to the other. “Cissa, come quickly,” he called.

Her hands fell away from Hermione. “I’ll be back, Draco. While I’m gone, take the next potion, saturate a dressing with it, expose the impact site, and call me when she’s ready.”

Snape’s wand was drawn and he was muttering a songlike incantation to stop the bleeding and close Molly’s wound. Narcissa assessed Molly’s vital signs as he did -- her pulse, blood pressure -- calculating which blood replenishing potions to give, and how much, and whether any amount would ever be enough. 

Draco stood over Hermione where she slumped on the chaise. Her colour was slightly better, but she had drifted back into her pained, suffering sleep. He soaked a bandage with the third potion, as he’d been told, and set it aside. It was time for step two.

“Expose the impact site,” he muttered to himself. “Expose -- expose the -- “

“Open her shirt so the poultice can go directly onto her skin,” Narcissa clarified from across the room.

“Wha -- I can’t -- we've never -- I -- “

“This is war, Draco. Act like a grownup,” Narcissa said. “Or ask Ronald to take care of her for you.”

He certainly was not about to do that.

The shaking in Draco’s hands was almost imperceptible as he undid the buttons of Hermione’s school shirt and spread it open to either side of her. She wore a tight white vest underneath and, as carefully as he could, Draco inched it upward, baring her stomach and ribs. In contrast to the pallid white of his hands, the colour of the skin of her torso went from a golden creaminess to red to a vicious purple, the mark of the curse that still tore away at her from the inside. The mark was about the size of his hand, the upper edge of it covered by the lower curve of her bra. 

Even a latent teenaged F-boy brain is a formidable thing, and in spite of the circumstances, it made sure to make note of the colour of its favourite girl’s bra: black. Simple, classic, sensible in its way, just everyday clothing to her, but also dangerous, provocative, not lacy but maybe silky…

“Right, well done,” his mother said, appearing at his elbow again, her wand drawn. Draco jumped away as she worked over Hermione’s bruise-like purple wound, but she beckoned him back. “Now, hold this still while I stick it in place,” she said, handing him the poultice to press to Hermione’s side. But he was too embarrassed to have his mother seeing him looking at Hermione this way, and he made a poor job of it. 

“Honestly, watch what you’re doing, Draco,” she scolded him. “My darling little gentleman, you are quite taken with her, aren’t you?” 

He was still blushing as his mother did him the mercy of smoothing Hermione’s vest back into place herself. 

She might have said more to Draco about this girl but Molly was stirring, her voice a tiny moan in her throat. Lucius bounded forward to take Molly’s hand. “Hang on, Molly. They’re seeing to you. They’re -- Cissa, please!” he called.

She was giving Draco parting instructions, waving at the vials Snape had already set out. “Now have her drink the rest of those, and in precisely that order.” 

She unearthed two more bottles from her apparently endlessly extended medical chest and sped to bring them to Molly.

Over the course of their childhoods, Narcissa’s sons had seen her treat their own injuries and ailments, but they’d never seen her like this -- as someone Snape and their father called out to for rescue, as a skilled healer saving other people’s lives.

At least, Ronald hoped she was saving someone’s life, bent over the bed, coaxing potions into his other mother. She had taken Lucius’s place at Molly’s bedside, speaking the most tender words that had ever passed between the two women. “Molly dear, you are so phenomenally strong. Open up and fight your way back to our family. Please...” 

Lucius left them to it, receding to stand next to Ronald. 

“What happened after we left the Ministry, Dad?” Ronald asked him. “I thought you were right behind us, but then it took so long for you to get here. She would have lost buckets of blood in that time. How could you wait like that?”

Lucius nodded. “I’m sorry, Ronald. There were new arrivals at the Ministry, after you left. Dumbledore appeared -- “

“Brilliant!” Ronald interrupted, beaming to finally have a shred of good news. “So Harry’s safe then.”

Lucius nodded again. “Yes, Potter was in robust health when last I saw him. But minutes after Dumbledore arrived, the Dark Lord came as well. The battle between them was -- most destructive. We were in the hall, about to escape through the Floos when the pair of them and Potter and Bella came crashing through to have it out. Great tidal waves of awesome magic that had the Floos flickering in and out of service. Devastation -- the Ministry can’t deny the Dark Lord’s return any longer. That’s for certain. He was driven off for now, but he will return, more ravenous for revenge than ever. He always returns.”

Ronald was wide-eyed, shocked, not sure what to think except to ask, “And Harry was there for all of that too?”

Lucius was not looking at Ronald but at the mothers of his children, fighting for life across the room. Molly had ominously fallen silent, even as Narcissa continued to call out to her. 

“Potter was no mere witness," he went on. “I don’t understand what happened, but he seemed to be the crux of much of the magic. His emotions, his powers were -- heightened.”

Ronald frowned. “Was that down to us? To Molly and Hermione and me getting injured?”

Lucius cleared his throat. “That and more. All of the Death Eaters but Bellatrix were captured by the headmaster with no casualties. The Order, on the other hand, was not so lucky.”

Ronald blinked, his face blanching. “Someone got hurt worse than Molly? Someone else went and -- died?”

Draco whirled around from where he was feeding the seventh potion to a groggy Hermione. “Hush. Does she really need to hear this right now?"

Lucius dropped a hand on Ronald’s shoulder. “How close was she to Sirius Black?”

\-----------------------------

There was no time for Ronald to mourn for Harry’s lost godfather, nor for Harry’s loss of his godfather. His mother was calling him, her voice edged with something frantic for the first time in this medical ordeal. 

“Ronald, lie down beside Molly,” Narcissa said. “She’s lost so much blood, too much to restore with replenishing potions alone. If I can’t transfuse some from you, we’re going to lose her.”

Reeling with all the pain and death, Ronald stood frozen next to Hermione’s chaise. “Lose Molly? First Sirius and now Molly?”

At that moment, Hermione was close enough to consciousness to hear him, but not close enough to control her response to Ronald’s words. She began to sob, loud and wild. “No, no, no, don’t lose, don’t lose.”

Snape had grasped Ronald by the wrist and was leading him forcibly to the bed where Narcissa would cast the transfusion spell -- a difficult, rather gory thing. “Draco, take Granger out of here,” Snape hissed at him. “Take the rest of the potions to give her and get her settled somewhere else.”

—------------------------

Draco‘s bedroom was dark as the door swung open before him. He stepped inside, and the house turned up the lights in the sconces along the walls. All at once, Hermione, who had been little more than dead weight as he carried her along the corridor, tossed her arm over his shoulder.

“Malfoy?"

"Yes, Granger. It's me."

"Where are we?" she asked, her eyes still closed. "I like it. It smells like you."

She was talking, not raving, not sobbing. After the hellish hour they’d just spent in his parents’ field hospital of a bedroom, Hermione finally sounded like herself, and he was so relieved he laughed.

“This is my bedroom,” he said. “But don’t get any ideas, Granger. You’re here to drink some potions and get some sleep.”

He leaned over his bed to set her down, her arms gaining more strength, clinging to his neck as he tried to rise to standing. “Don’t leave me here,” she said. “I would deserve it, but please don’t go.”

He smirked. “You remember sticking my feet to the ground and flying away with my brother while I begged you to stay?”

She caught his hand, as if he needed to be restrained. “You were right. It was a trap. I’m sorry.”

He sat on the bed next to her, pushing her hair behind her ear. Her eyes weren’t wide open but they were focused on him. “You’re safe now,” he said. “You’re acting like yourself again. That’s all I need from you. It’s alright.”

“But it’s not. Sirius -- Mrs. Weasley -- Harry -- “

He hushed her. “I know. Don’t think about it anymore tonight. There’s nothing more that can be done for any of them right now. You do, however, have more you need to do for yourself.” There was a clinking of glass as he set the final vials on the table at her side. “Here, you’ve taken potions one through eight. You’ve still got nine and ten to go.”

Hermione tried to sit up on her own but in the end, Draco had to prop her up to drink. “Your mother is a powerful potioneer,” she told him, grimacing between doses nine and ten.

Draco nodded. “Yes. She was Snape’s potions lab partner all through school.”

“He owes her then.”

He snorted. “Not anymore.”

With his help, Hermione settled onto her back in his bed once the potions were finished. He pulled the impossibly puffy covers to her chin, kissed her cheek, and moved to stand.

“Malfoy,” she said, her hand falling to the empty space where she wanted him to lie beside her. “I didn’t leave with Harry today out of any feeling that he means more to me than you do. He doesn’t. Don’t think that. I chose you when I went with him. I don’t put much stock in prophecy, but I do believe that Harry has to survive for Voldemort to die. And Voldemort has to die so your family can live. I can’t choose you without choosing Harry too.”

He let out his breath, hanging his head.

She patted the mattress again. “So don’t you leave me now. I need you. Be close to me. Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad,” he said. “It’s just -- “

“Then I don’t want to hear it,” she said, her bossiness returning as the final potion kicked in. “Now come here. Comfort me.”

Draco pulled back the blanket and slid into the bed. It was already warm with her body, her heat like a shield reminding him to go slow, be gentle, not selfish. “Am I hurting you?” he asked as he let himself rest beside her.

She winced. “I’m hurt, but it’s not you. And it’s hard to get comfortable with this soggy thing stuck to my side. What is it, anyway?” Her hand worked beneath the covers, feeling at the poultice.

He gave a nervous cough. “That’s potion number three being released slowly through your skin directly onto the cursed area.”

“Oh,” she said. “The cursed area. You helped to treat -- the cursed area?”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

“Draco Malfoy, did you take my shirt off of me?”

“Not all the way.”

“What did you see?”

“Nothing that couldn’t be helped,” he mumbled.

“Oh really? What colour is my bra today?”

He made a strangled sound, meaning to fib and say he hadn’t seen it, but then second-guessing himself, planning to laugh it off by answering with any colour but black. Only he was suddenly unable to remember what any of the other colours were called.

“That’s it,” she said. She rolled stiffly onto her good side, but her fingers were nimble, working at the buttons of his shirt.

“Granger, what -- “

“Fair is fair, Malfoy. You’ve seen me.”

“This is hardly the time -- “

“No, this is the perfect time,” she grinned at him tugging the tails of his shirt out of his waistband. “I’m not ready for all of you yet. But I need as much as I can bear tonight. And my injury and the fact that you wouldn’t take advantage of me under the influence of -- what is it -- ten potions, all of that guarantees this won’t get out of hand.”

He sighed and tipped his head against hers. “Won’t it?”

“No, it won’t,” she said, undoing his cufflinks and tossing them behind him. “Please, Malfoy. Let me sleep with my face against your skin. It heals me. You are potion eleven. Please.”

He muttered something she couldn’t quite hear -- something about his potion -- before groaning, “You are killing me, Granger.”

She had stopped just short of pushing his shirt down over his shoulders, toward his wrists. She waited, her eyes on his, pleading for permission. 

“Fine, go ahead,” he said.

She caressed his cheek, drawing his face down to kiss her even though she knew her mouth must taste of potions. It didn’t deter him. His kiss was warm and eager and he prolonged and deepened it as she pulled him free of his shirt and dropped it out of the bed.

His breath was ragged and rough as she broke the kiss to explore his chest, arms, and shoulders with her face and fingers. The smell of him was stronger, sharper without the barriers of fabric. The texture of his skin changed as she ranged over it from smooth to rough, tender to firm. She dragged her cheek over him, the sweet involuntary hum of hers sounding between them. 

“Just so you know,” he said, “this is nothing like the way I handled your torso to help my mother put that poultice on.”

She laughed, her breath against his sternum. His bare skin was electrified, all of him ready for all of her, his hands twitching to do more than just lay against her jaw and the nape of her neck. But she was settling in, easing into a position she could be still and sleep in. She spoke, “Thank you for being here today to put me back together.”

He palmed the back of her head, bowing his face into her hair, blowing out his lust and reaching for what was beyond it. He wanted to tell her. He had to. “You don’t have to believe me,” he began, “and you don’t have to remind me that I’m sixteen, and you certainly don’t have to say it back, but I love you.”

She nestled closer, and he felt her lips curve into a smile against his skin before she told him, “I believe you.”

\----------------------------------

Hermione awakened in the morning in Draco Malfoy’s bed, his sleeping body warm against her good side, sunlight streaming through a high arched window, and Ronald leaning over them, his arm wrapped from fingers to shoulder in a thick bandage.

“Feeling better then, Hermione?” he crowed.

Draco startled awake, swearing. “Shut it, Ronald.” He slid his arm from beneath Hermione’s head and sat up, the blanket falling far enough from Ronald to see he was still dressed in yesterday’s trousers.

“Only half-naked under there? Well, that’s for the best.” Ronald managed to say this before a pillow flew hard at his head. In spite of his injury, he stopped it like a fine quidditch keeper.

Draco didn’t see the save. He was rummaging through the room for a T-shirt, settling on something from a European quidditch club Hermione didn’t know.

“How’s Mrs. Weasley?” she asked, though based on Ronald’s mood, she hardly needed to.

“Weak, but snatched from death’s door, thanks to pints and pints of my blood,” Ronald answered.

Draco looked his brother over. “Heroic of you. And you don’t look much worse for wear for it.”

Ronald shrugged. “It wasn’t too bad. But there’s no rest for us heroes, right Hermione? Dumbledore wants us back at Hogwarts, quick as we can. Seems Harry’s not coping well on his own.”

Hermione frowned. “Poor Harry. Of course he’s not. I’ll get up -- “

“Not yet,” Ronald said. “The Order is coming here for a memorial service for Sirius this evening. Harry’s coming too. There’s no body to care for, not even a wand or a favourite jacket to bury. So we may as well press on, I suppose.” His sunny mood was fading, making his arm hurt, forcing him to sit in the chair at Draco’s desk.

Hermione was struggling to sit up in bed, Draco rushing to arrange the pillows behind her. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “We’ve all paid a terrible price for it, but even so, Harry did the right thing in the end by going to the Ministry yesterday. Whether he meant to or not, he ended up exposing Voldemort. Sirius’s sacrifice will benefit the entire country. Things will change now. They’ve got to.”

“They’re sure to change for us, at any rate,” Draco said. “The Dark Lord knows the Malfoys are his enemies now. I flung his bloody snake into the yard by its tail last night. There’s no coming back from that.”

“So stop calling him the Dark Lord, as if you respect him,” Ronald said.

“That’s what Snape calls him.”

“Yeah, and he’s a two-faced suck up, isn’t he?”

“He’s in a complicated and difficult position, and I won’t have you talking about him that way.”

“Snape? You won’t have me talking about Snape that way? What is the matter with you?”

“Knock it off,” Hermione shouted over them. The boys turned to find her picking at the edge of her poultice. “Look at this, Malfoy. It’s half off. It must be finished its treatment.”

“Don’t tug at it like that, you’ll hurt yourself,” he said, bending close, pushing her shirt out of the way. “Peel it off gently.”

“Right,” Ronald said, backing away at the sight of Draco’s hands in Hermione’s shirt. “I’ll leave you to it.”

\-----------------------------------------

At sunset on a mid-June evening, almost exactly at the solstice, Sirius Black’s surviving friends and family (with the exception of his cousin Bellatrix Lestrange), arrived for his memorial at Malfoy Manor.

Dumbledore had wanted the children to return to school and proceed as normally as they could, muscling past Harry’s grief and moving on seamlessly. But Narcissa Malfoy was not as deferential to Dumbledore as the members of his Order, and she wouldn’t hear of it. She demanded a seam, as neat a seam as they could make. And she informed the newly reinstated headmaster that Ronald, Draco, and Hermione would not return to school until Harry was given a moment away to mourn.

The service was quiet, small. Remembering the friendship between Padfoot the dog and Crookshanks, Hagrid made sure to bring the beast along with him. Crookshanks wouldn’t sit with Hermione, but minced gracefully over the mourners as they sat in a grand old garden under the orange sky. When Remus Lupin returned to his seat after sharing a eulogy, and couldn’t stop shaking silently in Nymphadora Tonks’s arms, Crookshanks rubbed against his shins, mewing his condolences.

Since Molly’s bloody robes turned out to be unsalvageable, she appeared at the funeral wearing black dress robes Narcissa had found in her own closet and altered to fit. They were well-made but not ostentatious -- nothing to make Arthur uncomfortable. Still weak and delicate, Molly had walked to the garden for the service supported by Arthur on one side and Ronald on the other.

“So you saved her,” Arthur said when the service ended, shaking Lucius’s hand for the first time in their long, long acquaintance.

“Narcissa saved her,” he said. “Narcissa and a blood donation from Ronald.”

“Ah, then they’ve done us both a great service, haven’t they,” Arthur said.

Lucius’s nod was more of a bow. “Yes, they have.”

The Weasley twins came as guests to the service as well. It was the pair of them that let the gathering shift away from its formal sombreness and toward something people could smile at.

They stood in the manor’s grand entrance, at the foot of the staircase nodding and cracking their knuckles. “So this is Ronnie’s little cottage, is it?” George said.

Fred nodded eagerly. “Yeah, so many possibilities here. Endless, really.”

“Now wait,” Ronald said, pointing his finger at them. “Don’t you try to pull a prank on me in this house. It’s ancient and enchanted and it foils anyone who means me harm.”

Their eyebrows raised in unison.

“Does it?” George said.

“That sounds like a claim that needs testing,” Fred agreed.

“How does a house -- “

“Even an enchanted one -- “

“Understand what a wizard might mean by ‘harm’?”

“I wonder…”

Molly dropped a hand on the piano keys, still sitting where Arthur had left her to rest after walking back from the garden. Her voice was just as loud as the instrument. “Don’t you DARE make trouble as guests in someone else’s house! It is not as if I never told you how to behave -- “

The twins were cheering. “Hey, Mum is back to her old self already!”

Along the corridor, Lucius paused where he stood in the dining room doorway about to invite everyone in for tea. There was loud Weasley laughter ringing through his house -- the voices of Ronald’s brothers, and their mother, a girl he had fancied in school, who would always have a bit of his heart, and who lived today thanks to Narcissa Black Malfoy, the best, most loveable woman Lucius had ever known.

Snape joined him where he stood in the doorway. He scowled toward the sound of the laughter. “What have you brought upon yourself, Lucius?” Snape mused.

He smirked in reply. “I’m not sure. But I do believe I will be needing more of it and more often.”

Ginny Weasley had come along too. Instead of hollering up the hall with her mother and older brothers, she had lingered in the garden with Harry in the near darkness. 

“You should have let me come to the Ministry with you,” she was telling him. “We came racing to the forest, searching for you, all of us completely prepared to go along.”

Harry sighed. “I know. And thank you. But it was for the best you didn’t. Nothing was what I expected once we got there. I’d say I’m sorry I left you, but I’m not.”

She punched him lightly on the arm as they strolled over the pavement. “Next time, Potter,” she said. “You’d better bring me next time. I mean -- because -- well, how am I to start my epic romance with you if you keep leaving me behind?”

His feet scuffed beneath him. “Your -- start your -- what?”

She laughed at him. “Try to act surprised when I turn to you one day and snog the life out of you with everyone we know watching,” she said. “But for now, don’t forget to come find me whenever you’re blue.” She was getting tall, and she didn’t need to boost herself very high on her tiptoes to kiss Harry, very lightly and sweetly, on the cheek.

Harry stood in the twilight of the manor gardens half-smiling, half-stunned, blinking furiously behind his lenses. “Th-thanks -- for that.”

She was walking backwards, away from him. “Excuse now, will you Harry?” she said. “I have a feeling Ronald may be in need of a chaperone.”

There were many times when Ginny would have been right about that. Now was not one of them. At that moment, Ronald was trying to make a proper introduction between Pansy and Narcissa. But his mother wouldn’t hold still for it, flitting around the kitchen, supervising refreshments as if that’s what war heroes like to do best.

“Ah, yes,” Narcissa was saying to them over her shoulder. “So this is the girl Bella meant when she spoke of ‘the one hiding in the toilets.’”

Ronald’s face flushed scarlet. “Mum, no. Bellatrix is -- don’t listen to her. Pansy is the best girl ever. Not -- not -- toilets -- “

“It’s alright, Ron,” Pansy said. “Go ahead and tell your family that story. It’s an excellent study of our gift for complex planning and teamwork, our ability to connect with each other no matter what our circumstances. I think love and toilets make a beautiful contrast, don’t you agree?”

His gaze flicked between the two of them -- two women raised in pure-blood wizard society, now excluding themselves from it; two women who, in spite of their strict training in etiquette, say whatever they think; two women fiercely loyal, firmly connected to men they loved.

While he marveled at them, their conversation moved on from toilets to the utter loveliness of the canapes that were about to be sent out. Ronald stood blinking at his mother and his girlfriend, his girlfriend and his mother, each of them very much like the other, actually.

“Stars help me,” he muttered. In fact though, he wasn't feeling scared, but blessed. He draped his good arm around Pansy’s waist and sunk his chin into her shoulder, watching adoringly as she rearranged the formation of a tray of deviled eggs. As she finished, she turned her head to kiss his face, and Narcissa turned away to smile.

Hermione did not leave with the rest of the guests at the end of the night. She had another week of potions to take and Narcissa thought she ought to supervise it herself. No one asked where she had slept the first night she stayed at the manor, but Narcissa did make a point of showing her personally to a guest room on the second night.

Before they went to bed, Draco and Hermione sat in an oversized armchair in the library, Crookshanks dozing along the top of it. Still recovering from her injury, Hermione was too tired to sit up or read. Instead, she lay with her head on Draco’s thigh as he read aloud from a book of old wizard fairy tales. The manor’s version of the book was old enough that the stories’ endings were not always happy, not always what we would have wanted.

“What happens next, Malfoy?” she asked when he closed the book.

“Well, Dumbledore reinforces the protective wards on our house, Dad sees about getting surgery to take the mark off his arm. It sounds as if Potter is going to be missing some school to research a theory Dumbledore’s got about the Dark Lord and some missing old knick-knacks…”

“And what about us?” she asked. “We go back to school and hold hands in the corridors and snog during prefect duties and -- what? Just wait?”

“Wait?” he said. “Wait for what?”

“For -- for something to happen, to go wrong, to pull me onto the back of a thestral again.”

“Granger, that’s not waiting,” Draco said, setting the book aside and pulling her closer. “That’s living. That’s a life. A normal life, like most people get, like you’re going to have to get used to, so you can enjoy the days when the Dark Lord is gone for good. And he will be gone. I don’t know how long my father can stay pent up here at home. He’d better be gone someday.”

She laughed, smoothing his shirt against his chest. “He will be gone? Can that truly happen?”

“Yes, it can.” And though he didn’t know how, he added, “Believe me.”

Hermione rose to her knees, her face level with his, her arms around his neck. “I do believe you.” It was the second time since she’d come to Malfoy Manor that she’d said it. And both times, it was her way of telling him that she loved him too.


	38. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said no epilogue, but too many people felt like the original ending was a cliffhanger. So here is more of the end. And thereby we learn to ALWAYS COMMENT in order to get the most out of a story, lol. Thank you for caring! ❤❤❤❤

Ronald Malfoy made his way back inside Hogwarts castle. The battle was over. Voldemort was dead. Harry was alive. Ronald had just stood on the bridge while Harry snapped the elder wand and threw the pieces into a chasm, and now he was going to his mother. Molly needed comfort as she mourned Fred. That was a wound he would have to help her tend for the rest of her life. 

He stood at the foot of the grand staircase in the Entrance Hall, everything strewn with rubble, and took a breath. It felt like the first time he’d been able to expand his chest to its full capacity, without a horrible weight crushing it, in nearly a year. He was so tired. After months of research and manipulating Slughorn, the horcrux hunt had started near the end of their sixth year, first with just Harry and Dumbledore and then, when Dumbledore was too frail, Hermione and Ronald had joined.

And where was Dumbledore now anyway? Why had he vanished halfway through the battle and left Harry to get through the worst of everything alone? It was frustrating but rather typical of him, really. Ronald looked over his shoulder, watching for Harry who hadn’t followed him inside yet. He had a feeling that, whatever happened to Dumbledore, Harry might already know the reasons why.

Ronald shivered a little, peering through the dust to the top of the stairs, then down at his own feet in the battered pair of boots he’d walked half the country in. It had been a lean, painful year in hiding, on the road. Ronald was left skinny and dirty, worn out, scarred. All that work and struggle had succeeded in the end, and here he stood, victorious but mourning, needing to gather strength to climb a flight of stairs. 

There was a hand on his shoulder. 

What awful news was it now? He grit his teeth and began a slow turn to face whoever was accosting him.

He gasped. “Pansy?”

“Ron!” She hopped at him, her arms around his neck, pulling him down to fill his head with the sweet smell of her hair.

He groaned his relief into her shoulder, lifting her feet from the ground in spite of his tiredness. “You’re here? All this time, I didn’t see you -- “

Still holding his neck she tipped back, looking into his face, brushing the end of her nose against his as she shook her head in answer. “No, too many Death Eater children in Slytherin. Conflicted loyalties. McGonagall sent us to the dungeon for safe-keeping.”

“Thank the stars,” Ronald said. He was melting with relief, setting her feet on the stair above himself, his spine curving over her, all but falling on Pansy, breathing against the nape of her neck. “You’re safe. You’re here with me.”

“So let’s go,” she was saying, smoothing his matted hair and kissing his rough unshaven chin. “Enough of all of this. I only want you. And not here.”

He laughed painfully, his voice rumbling against her ear. “Months and months later, nothing but handwritten letters between us in that time, me returning half wasted away and scruffy as anything, and you still want me, do you?”

She pushed at his shoulders, nudging him to stand up straight. He had lost a lot of weight. She saw it in his cheeks, felt it through his clothes, and it hurt her heart. Still, he was even taller than the last time she'd seen him, strong enough to keep growing through it all. Her eyes were tracking all over him now, ending at his face, meeting his stare -- oh, that blue. “Still want you? Definitely. Absolutely. Completely.”

He lifted his hand to her cheek. He'd forgotten human skin could be so smooth. She blinked her dark eyes at him, studying his expression. His eyes were the same blue, yes, but with less of a sparkle today -- adoring but sad, a little doubtful. She saw it, and it made her angry. 

No, she thought. They will not take this away from us.

She jumped into his arms again, her legs around his waist. He staggered and stepped forward to sit her on the bannister, both of them laughing softly.

“‘Ronald Weasley Malfoy,” she began, “you are going to take me away from here, to your haunted manor, where you will lock us in your bedroom, and get me pregnant.”

He laughed, loudly, happily, bowing his head over her shoulder.

“Or something like that,” she added. “Just take me home, Ron. And do something that will mean you’ll have to stay with me, forever and ever.”

She held his face in her hands, guiding his mouth to hers, kissing him for the first time in months, deeply and joyfully. He sighed, breathing his voice into her mouth. She drove the pace higher, devouring what was left of him, her hands on his chest, clawing at his clothes before she drew back, still pecking lightly at his lips and face even as she kept talking. 

“You are eighteen years old,” she said. “Historically, that hasn't been an unusual age for a wizard to start a family. Especially in war time."

"Historically?" he smirked. “You’re a historian now?”

She ignored it, ploughing on with her proposal. "And babies -- well, you’re your birth mother’s son, aren’t you? Twins, triplets, whatever you want -- they’re yours, Ron. Take me home with you. Don't ever leave my sight again.”

Short minutes before, he wouldn’t have thought it could be possible for him to be smiling again so soon. But he was smiling now -- laughing. He wasn't sure if he wanted to get Pansy pregnant, but he was sure he wanted to try. Her legs pulled him snugly against the crux of her body, making all the decisions before him seem deceptively easy. 

Still smiling, he spoke against her lips. “Be careful, Pansy love. I’m tired and impressionable right now, liable to give you exactly what you’re asking for.”

She broke away from his mouth with a loud smacking sound. “Good, then let’s go.”

As she watched, his face darkened with grief again. “I'm sorry, love. I need to take leave of Molly before I go anywhere. I don’t know if you heard about Fred but -- I can’t leave until I see the Weasleys and know for certain they’re taken care of.”

Pansy had heard about Fred. She bowed her head, nodding. “Of course,” she said. She dropped her legs from around Ronald’s waist and slid off the bannister to stand on the stairs.

He took her hand. “Come with me,” he said. “Come help me comfort our family.”

They found the surviving Weasleys still gathered around Fred’s body. The agony of the early moments after his death had receded into an awful ache. This agony was theirs for life, and it would crest again later, expectedly and unexpectedly. But for now, the lot of them were quiet and grave. George lay slumped with his head on Fred’s cold stomach, his father’s hand stroking his back. 

Molly was shifted from Percy’s arms to Ronald’s and he held her, speaking softly of funeral arrangements. When the rest of the family joined in, and the conversation turned to the logistics of moving Fred to Aunt Muriel’s house to prepare him for burial in the Prewett family cemetery, Ronald’s attention drifted elsewhere. At the back of the hall, stood over a table mixing potions, he spotted two heads of shining platinum hair.

“Mother,” he said under his breath. 

Not letting go of Pansy’s hand, he trotted toward Narcissa. It was clear what had happened. For the duration of the war, Malfoy Manor had been used as a hospital for the Order. Narcissa had taken the lead as the healer there. At the end of sixth year, Draco had gone home for the summer, and while Ronald went with Harry to hunt horcruxes, Draco hadn’t returned to school either, but stayed at home to run the hospital with his parents. 

Today, it made sense to bring the hospital to the battle, and here the pair of them were at Hogwarts, working with Madam Pomfrey to heal what they could, and stabilizing the rest to send them off to St. Mungo’s in London. 

Ronald looked over his shoulder again. Did Hermione know Draco was here?

It was a question that, like so many others on this day, would have to wait. There was a second wand tucked into Ronald’s sleeve, made from unyielding walnut, Bellatrix Lestrange’s wand. Hermione had given it to him to return to his mother, Bellatrix’s sister. Watching Narcissa working with cool composure, he wondered if she knew what had become of Bellatrix. Did she know Molly had killed her in defense of her children, his sister and brothers.

“Mum?” he called.

At the sound of his voice, Narcissa’s head shot up. 

Draco looked too, tense and wild, as if he’d been waiting. “Is she alright?” was all he said.

Ronald nodded, grinning. “Yeah, she’s brilliant.” 

Draco let out his breath with so much force he bent over the table. Narcissa smiled as she pounded him on the back. “There you have it, darling. Now concentrate.” She was pushing a vial of thick pink potion into Draco’s hand, leaving him in charge as she rushed to Ronald, holding his face and kissing both of his cheeks. 

“My darling, you look a sight,” she said. “It’s all over here for everyone but Poppy, Draco, and me -- and Severus, if he ever gets here. Go home, Ronald. Your father is there. You’ll be safe. You can eat -- you’d better. Just look at you. Skinny as when you were in primary school.”

“Mum, wait,” he said, letting go of Pansy and pulling his mother's hands from where she’d been feeling his ribs. He held them still as he produced Bellatrix’s wand.

Narcissa’s face paled at the sight of it. Her fingers closed over the tip of the wand. “So she’s fallen, has she?”

He nodded. “Yes. She’s gone.”

Narcissa raised her head, looking down the length of the hall to where the rows of unclaimed dead, their faces covered with sheets, lay waiting. Bellatrix would be among them. In time, she would have uncovered her sister herself. Now she knew to expect it. Maybe she always had. Narcissa nodded, tucking the walnut wand into her robes. “Thank you, Ronald. Now go home, darling. We’ll join you when we can.”

“Mum, are you sure you can keep at it after -- “

“Yes,” she said. “Bella chose this death herself, long, long ago. I’ve had years to prepare for it. Too long, and never long enough. Please -- Draco needs my help. I can’t dwell on this now. But I’ll feel better about everything if I know you’re comfortable at home. Take Miss Parkinson home and go.”

\---------------------------------

Not much later, Harry Potter and Severus Snape came shouting into the triage hall. 

“Shut up, Potter!"

"Don't you speak to me that way! Not anymore. How could you let him -- ”

"Cissa, help!" Snape cut him off.

She looked up from her potions and saw not two men coming in together, but three. Between Harry and Snape dangled the pale yellow form of Albus Dumbledore, his eyes half-closed, his head lolling. His robes were soaked in blood. It must have come from the wound in his throat, still trickling.

"Snake bite," Snape said as Draco and Narcissa pulled the headmaster onto a cot. "You know the one."

“Draco -- “

“The antivenom, yes. Here.”

"But it's dead," Harry protested. "The snake -- Neville -- he -- ”

“Only very recently,” Snape snapped in return. “It was indeed the Dark Lord’s familiar that did this, while still alive. I know. I saw him order the attack.”

Narcissa frowned. “He ordered a snake attack on Dumbledore? Sent a familiar after the greatest living wizard of our time?" 

"No, of course not. He set the snake on me." The words burst out of Snape like a confession. "Professor Dumbledore interceded to rescue me. He hasn't stirred since, though he should have been able to repel the snake easily. But then -- I can't explain why -- ”

Behind him, Draco swore, soflty, as if terrified. He and Narcissa had pulled Dumbledore’s robes and inner garment away from his body to better see his wound. Beneath his clothing, the flesh on the left side of his body from his fingertips to his sternum was mottled black, as if his skin was smeared and stained with poisoned coal dust from the inside.

A cry of alarm went up from Harry. Snape fell to his knees beside the cot.

Narcissa was shaking her head. “This is no snake bite.”

“The curse,” Snape nodded. “From the incident with the resurrection stone in the horcrux ring.”

Narcissa hissed. “By all the stars, Severus.”

Harry’s jaw quivered as he spoke. “Since sixth year, his fingers were black. That was the beginning of -- this?”

Snape wrenched his own neck, forcing himself to explain. “Yes, I knew he was afflicted this way. And I knew how it would end, and that it was utterly hopeless. But he assured me the progress was slow, not yet past the shoulder. I should have insisted on examining him myself. As it is -- ”

Harry was incendiary. “He told me it was just old age. That he needed rest and peace and he’d be fine. But you knew this was happening? You were watching over him and you did nothing?"

Narcissa stepped between them. "Mr. Potter, this involves spell damage from a horcrux and a hallows together. There isn't anything anyone could have done."

"Everyone get out of the way then," Harry was saying, veering around them, reaching for a wand, any wand. He was the bloody chosen one, handler of horcruxes, of hallows, of anything. If they'd just let him --

“Listen!" Draco called over the commotion. "Listen," he repeated once the room had gone still. From the end of his wand, a line of red light bobbed, marking the rhythm of Dumbledore's heart, every slow bob matched to a soft tone, growing softer, fainter, smaller, until it was gone, and the light went out.

Harry let out a howl, falling on Dumbledore's bare blackened chest to listen for his heartbeat with his ear. There was nothing, just the noise of his own weeping echoing through the empty chamber of his headmaster’s ribcage. Arthur Weasley pulled him back and took him into their circle, Ginny's arms around him, her tears in his hair. Percy dashed off to find Professor McGonagall and bring her the news.

Severus collapsed to sit on the filthy stone floor. "This can't be, Cissa," he moaned. "It can't have happened for me. Not me. It's a waste. A crime."

"It is what he chose," she said, sinking to her knees on the floor beside him. She held his face, his eyes clenched tightly closed. "Severus, darling, please," she said as he began to sob. 

Draco turned away from them, reverently refastening the robes over Dumbledore's body, laying a sheet over him. 

He'd come to accept the significance of Snape’s connection to himself, and to his parents. But there was something between Snape and his mother that had nothing to do with him or Lucius. Narcissa and Snape weren't just parties to the same Gravida Triadum spell. No matter what Snape had told him when he was younger, they were two people who loved each other, who trusted each other completely, who needed each other. It was strange -- not quite right, but beautiful, powerful. And it was something Draco left to itself. He stepped away from the bedside and returned to his potions.

"Waste," Snape sobbed between the foot of the bed where Dumbledore lay and the warmth of Narcissa’s hands.

"Not at all," she cooed, still bracing either side of Severus’s face. "This great man chose a life, a future for you. It was no mistake. It was a conscious show of his love for you."

Snape shuddered, unable to bear it.

"And here is mine," she said. Narcissa kissed his cheeks, and then, very sweetly, his mouth. It was not a chaste kiss -- too warm, too open and lush with feeling. But it was not wholly carnal either. It reached Snape like a spell, calming his sobs, his eyes clear and open as she drew away.

He breathed her name and let his head fall against her shoulder, the trembling in his body beginning to still.

"Let the headmaster teach you this last lesson," she said into his ear as she smoothed his wild black hair. "Learn that you are loved. By this great wizard, and by the family you created. By me. Learn that, and live."

His large, thin hand formed to the back of her head, pulling her forehead against his. And he answered with a single nod.

She rose to standing, bringing him with her. Draco saw their unsteadiness and rushed to help. Snape swayed on his feet and Draco reached for him, but Snape stopped him with one raised hand. 

“It's alright, Draco,” he said, patting his shoulder. "I'm alright, my son."

\-------------------------------

Draco was exhausted, the shine of the early moments following the victory had been dulled by hours of wounds and death. The triage hall was nearly quiet now. Dumbledore lay with the rest of the dead. The Weasleys had gone, taking Potter with them. Narcissa had taken Snape back to the manor. Ronald would be there by now too. It was for the best that Draco couldn't imagine his brother as he was at that moment, reclining in a warm, sudsy bath while his brand new fiancee balanced nimbly on the porcelaine edge, washing his hair. 

Dim orange lights burned from sconces in the walls, and Madam Pomfrey herself lay on a cot, about to fall into her one-eye-open sleep.

Draco might have been the only creature still moving through the mostly abandoned castle. He stood packing supplies back into the extendible bag his mother had left with him. Finally, his thoughts were his own, and they went where they always did -- to her. Where was she? Why hadn’t Hermione Granger found him yet? Ronald said she was alright. She could walk and see. Where was she? 

Maybe she’d already gone back to the manor with everyone else. Her parents had been staying there for the past eight months. Lucius and the ancient enchantments of his old house had been keeping them hidden and safe from the Dark Lord. There wouldn't be any more need for that.

He might just miss them when they returned to London. The Grangers themselves had remarked that they’d spent more time with Draco that year than they’d spent with their own daughter in the past seven. Ann and Tim Granger -- they were like family now.

The thought of it raised goosebumps on the backs of Draco’s legs. There was something about war that drove people to make families. Dr. Tim said it was the same for Muggles, that they even had a name for it: something about babies and booms, or maybe it was bangs. He warned Draco about it, as if it might be a bad thing. Draco wasn’t tempted by the thought of babies, but the bang part...

She approached him from behind, pausing at the entrance to the hall, struck to be in the presence of what she had been longing for and dreaming about for months and months. Draco was mere metres away now, a silhouette lit only by the dim lights in front of him. Hermione hadn’t touched him since Bill Weasley’s wedding. Now here he stood, with shoulders that might be broader than when she’d cupped her hands over them as they danced together under a tent at the Burrow. 

At the potions table, the movements of his hands and arms, of his head on his long, fine neck, were quick and precise, lithe, almost like he was still dancing, as if he was more of an artist than a medic.

Even in this hellish chaos, he was sure of himself, competent, natural, not a child, just as she was no longer a child. If, through all that had passed this year, they still fit together the way they used to, she would never let go of him again.

His medical bag clicked as he closed it. She snagged a breath, and waited as he turned around.

They stood for a moment, staring, speechless before he rushed at her, snatching her off her feet and turning in a circle. “Granger,” he said into her ear, a hot hungry growl. 

She couldn’t speak his name in return. His mouth was on hers, no shyness, nothing restrained. He crushed himself into her, her nose against his cheek, breathing his scent, her mouth open, tasting him again. Every breath she took seemed to expand her body and soul, restoring her from her dingy, scrawny wartime self to what she used to be -- glowing and robust, the way she was that night she got caught in the corridors after curfew, and Draco saved her with a kiss that changed both of their lives.

“What took you so long?” he said as he dragged his mouth from hers.

“McGonagall,” she answered, swaying, breathless. He hadn’t waited for an answer before kissing from her chin to her collar bone. “I was coming into the castle just as Percy brought her word about Dumbledore, and since all the other teachers had scattered -- oh -- stars, Malfoy. Um, she took me into her office and we cried and made plans for Hogwarts’ rebuilding and future.”

He groaned and pulled away again. “That’s what kept you from our victory snog? You were having a job interview to join McGonagall’s team at Hogwarts?”

She shoved at his chest. “It’s not like I didn’t know you were busy here.”

“I was but -- hell, Granger, even my mum took a moment to kiss Snape -- “

“She WHAT?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Me? It’s you who’s -- ”

He kissed her quiet again, her words muffled into the high, soft hum that always undid him. The sound jolted through his arms, and he yanked her onto her tiptoes. She made another sound, a tiny yelp of delighted surprise, and on they went, stoking each other’s fires until, in the hall beyond them, Madam Pomfrey cleared her throat.

He broke away, his hands moving from her waist to just beneath her arms and back again. “Let’s go somewhere. We’ve never been alone together as proper adults before and -- there -- we -- we might want to -- relate to each other -- differently now.”

Her pulse surged, catching his meaning, her cheeks flushing. “Alright,” she said, her throat suddenly dry. “The manor?”

He shook his head. “No. Everyone will be there.”

“Does it matter? That’s where Ronald took Pansy. I saw them leave.”

“Exactly. My poor mother’s nerves. Don’t forget your mum is waiting there for us too.”

Hermione grimaced. “Maybe that’s good. I should probably report to my parents first. Not that Ronald won’t have already told them I’m alright, but still...”

Draco tipped his head against hers, groaning a quiet protest.

“Or maybe we could go to London instead, to their house. No one’s using it. And then I could get cleaned up before my parents have to see me, so they won’t worry about me being all grimy and bloody -- “

“Done,” Draco said, and with the Hogwarts wards in tatters, he apparated both of them into the front hall of the Grangers’ house.

In a twisting, pulling instant they stood in the silence of the house she was raised in, his arms around her in the dark. Hermione didn’t light her wand but fumbled for the light switch, a little surprised to find the power still on. Draco squinted and blinked in the sudden overheard electric light. His discomfiture was sweet and vulnerable, and she kissed him again. The new privacy of the small, empty house heated them in a new way. In the narrow hall, she was quickly backed against the wall, her head pressed against the glass covering her grandmother’s unmoving portrait, Draco’s mouth on her neck again, one hand pulling at her jumper to bare her shoulder to him.

“Malfoy, wait. I’m filthy. I haven’t washed in days.”

His voice was a husky monotone. “Doesn’t matter.”

‘Well, it matters to me,” she said, half-laughing, tugging the collar of her jumper back into place. “I don’t want to risk your first sight of all of me being of me at my worst.”

He straightened his posture. “My first sight of all of you? So you’re -- we’re -- going to -- ?”

“We’re going to remain open to every possibility,” she said with more warmth than primness. “I’ll go up and shower. You go through to the lounge, lie down on the sofa, get some rest, and wait for me.”

By the time she came back, fresh and clean, wearing a fluffy dressing gown over a set of blue satin pyjamas, Draco was facedown and asleep on her parents’ sofa. She didn’t mean to wake him, but the war had made light sleepers of them all. He startled to sitting as soon as she knelt on the floor beside him.

“Sorry,” she said, as he took her hand and raised her to sit next to him. It wasn’t close enough, and he pulled her into his lap, her dressing gown a thick and bothersome barrier between them. She might have batted her eyelashes as she said, “So after all this time, do you still like me?”

He barked a laugh. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

She rolled her eyes. “I can tell you still want to snog me. But that’s not what I’m asking.”

He tightened the link of his arms around her waist. “I fell more in love with you this year, not less. I got to know your mind better than ever with each of the metre-long parchments you wrote and had sent to me somehow. And I lived with your parents. Got to a preview of what you might be like when you’re middle-aged. Got to hear all their stories of you as a jabbering precocious obnoxious little girl, and not even that discouraged me.” He brushed the end of his nose inside her ear.

“And Mum and Dad like you?” she prodded.

He scoffed. “No need to sound so surprised, Granger. In fact, your dad let me in on a little bit of Muggle culture. He told me a few things about postwar baby bangs.”

“Baby bangs?” she repeated, fingering her forehead, where a fringe would be if she still had one.

“Baby bangs,” he insisted. “You know. When young people come home from war and get right down to life affirming marrying and reproducing.”

“Oh!” she said, laughing. She squeezed his cheeks between her hands. “Yes, of course. Baby bangs. Oh, aren’t you darling?”

“And based on that,” Draco said, speaking over her laughter as she released his face. “Based on that, when I see Dr. Tim again, I’m going to ask his permission to propose to you.”

Her laughter cut off abruptly. “Ask his permission?”

There was something chilling in her tone, but Draco kept talking anyway. “Yes. I was raised right and I know that any decent family begins with the blessing of its forebears -- “

“You know that what?” She pushed at his chest. “Draco Malfoy, I am not chattel to be transferred through an agreement between a pair of men.”

“No, of course you’re not,” he said. “But you are precious and I take our future seriously, with all the formalities intact, and I intend -- “

She was struggling to stand, to get out of his hold. “You intend to preserve the backward, stratifying etiquette of the dangerous, destructive pure-blood ideology that got us into this nightmare of a war in the first place? Is that what you intend?”

“I clearly do not give a damn about any pure-blood ideology,” he said, rising to stand in front of her. 

They stood close, their chests heaving, cheeks flushed. She glared up at him, her lips parted, her eyes on his mouth. She wasn’t sure whether to yell at him more or to accept him at his word, believe what she already knew about him, throw herself back into his arms, and let their anger transmute into passion once again.

By the stars, she missed him.

There was no time for any of that. There was scraping at the front door, metal muggle keys turning in the lock, and two dear voices Hermione hadn’t heard for too long. 

\---------------------------

Draco and all three of the Grangers were comfortably installed in the lounge, a cup of tea in everyone’s hands, Tim sat in his armchair with his feet in his slippers, sighing with satisfaction as he took in the sight of his own house, his own daughter -- the young man she must have brought here intending to shag notwithstanding.

“Get that nice warm tea down you, Draco,” Ann said. “And have a biscuit, Hermione. You’re deadly thin. What a day you’ve all had. Cissa was quite exhausted and that gloomy chemistry teacher looked like the walking dead by the time they got back to the manor this evening.”

Draco smiled as pleasantly as he could and sipped obediently at his tea. On the rug, his foot covered Hermione’s, the only place he was touching her, much to his frustration.

“Just like old times, having all of us together in the house again, isn’t it?” Tim observed. “The only thing missing is Ronald.”

“Well, I don’t reckon he’s missing us much tonight,” Draco said, his teacup clicking back into his saucer on the coffee table. “If I know our Ronald, he’s at the manor getting engaged right now.”

Tim reached across the arm of his chair to bat knowingly at Ann’s arm. “See, it’s like I said, darling. They’ve had their war and now they’re after having a baby boom.”

“Baby boom,” Draco repeated under his breath, tapping his fist against his forehead.

Hermione smirked and swapped the positions of their feet so hers was on top of his.

“That will be that Parkinson girl Ronald’s with,” Ann mused. “How nice for Cissa. She’s from one of their fellow traditional families of wizards. The ones with no ambitions for their daughters outside of running a splendid household.”

“You don’t know that, Mum,” Hermione said.

“Don’t I?” Ann intoned.

All at once, Draco was on his feet. “Doctors Granger, I am not asking permission,” he said. “Hermione won’t let me. But I am telling both of you, most respectfully, lovingly even, that I am going to ask your daughter to marry me. Soon.”

There was a beat of silence as Tim and Ann sat dumbfounded over their tea.

“And I’m going to say ‘yes.’” Hermione had stood up beside Draco and taken him by the hand, her eyes fixed on her parents. “Whenever he asks me, I’m going to agree to it. Happily, whole-heartedly.”

Draco let out a rough breath and closed his other hand over hers.

But the silence deepened, terrifying him. Draco panicked and started speaking again. “I want Hermione for a wife, not -- not for -- for babies. I mean -- someday yes, but -- I like that Hermione wants more than just a household. No -- no, not JUST a household, as if it’s not important because -- the babies will be our first priority -- once they come. I mean, of course. But for now it’s -- I -- it’s not that kind of boom -- “

Ann raised a hand. “Hermione, please. Tell your poor dear intended to stop.”

Tim was standing, one arm bending around Draco’s shoulders, his hand patting him hard on the chest. “No need to worry yourself, Draco. You’re alright. And thank you for not asking permission. It’s between the two of you alone.”

“Yes, kindly leave us out of it. Very mature of you,” Ann said, her arms raised to hug Hermione, her neck bending to kiss her. And for the first time, Ann boosted herself onto her toes to kiss Draco on the cheek as well.

“Right then,” Tim said, both eyebrows still raised. “That’s enough excitement for one night, don’t you think, Ann?”

“Yes, I do,” she said stepping toward the door. “We’re off to bed. Don’t stay up too late. Draco, you know your way to the guest room.”

“‘Night,” Hermione sang as they left. She knew her parents wanted to be alone to discuss what they'd just heard. They would deal with Draco and Hermione once they knew one another's minds, but not until morning.

In the meantime, Draco melted onto the sofa. “What did I do? Granger, what did I say? Something just came over me, and now -- ”

“Now you get to stay here,” she said, hopping onto the sofa, landing on her knees, facing him where he sat, draping her torso over his chest.

He raised his hand to caress her face. “I get to stay here in the guest room. You heard her.”

She laughed as she slumped against his neck.

He blew out a pouty breath. “It’s not funny.”

“It’s a little funny.” 

He twisted toward her, pushing her onto her back and coming to lie on top of her on the sofa. She arched her back as his weight pushed her into the cushions. He threaded his arms through the space it created between her back and the sofa, holding her tightly and purring into her ear. “When did you take up giggling?”

“I am not giggling.”

“Yes, you are. And I like it. Immensely.” 

He was telling the truth. She felt it, the excitement he used to try to hide from her warm and insistent between them now. She moved beneath him and he didn't bother to stifle a quiet moan as she raised her head to kiss him. 

"You know," she began, "Mum told you to sleep in the guest room, but she hasn't told me NOT to sleep in the guest room with you."

His face broke into a massive smirk. "That's my girl." He set to kissing her again, and she answered hotly, letting herself climb toward what they'd been building to for years.

"Hermione," he said after a moment, as her fingernails clicked against his belt buckle. "We can't catch your mother in a technicality and sneak off to try to lose our virginity in the room next to her without waking her up. That's not how we want this."

She sighed and tried to catch her breath. "No, I don't suppose we can. Especially after they kept such cool heads during all that talk of proposals."

Draco hefted himself back to sitting, tugging her upwards with him. “I’ll go back to the manor for now. I’ll organize a few things, and see you tomorrow.”

She whimpered a protest and nuzzled at the flesh below his ear.

“I’ll be back, Granger,” he said, stroking her back, hearty affection coming in where lust had been a moment before, letting her know his mind wouldn’t be easily changed. “I’ll be back, and I’ll be ready.”

\----------------------------------

The manor lit its lamps as Draco arrived, not brightly, as for a returning hero, but with a common warmth that spoke of the end of heroics for now. He stood at the foot of the stairs and wondered if his parents were still awake. There were heirloom rings that had been passed around the family at betrothals for hundreds of years, and he figured he’d have to work fast to beat Ronald to first crack at them.

Before he could begin to mount the stairs, there was a clatter of silverware, far away, in the kitchen at the back of the house. Draco moved toward it. There were more lights the closer he got, until at last, standing over the counter piling cold food onto a platter, like a picnic, stood Ronald. He was wearing pyjama bottoms and a dressing gown that had come untied as he worked, revealing his lean, undernourished chest and abdomen.

“Stars, Ronald,” Draco called to him. “Glad to see you're up all night eating. Look at you.”

“I know, right?” Ronald said, glancing down at himself, grinning in spite of what he saw. “Got to keep my strength up, don’t I.”

Draco caught him in a rough embrace, clapping him on the back. He stood back, his face half-grimace, half-smirk. “You smell like flowers.”

Ronald beamed. “Exactly. Pansy’s upstairs.”

Draco snickered. “More private chess lessons?"

"Definitely not."

Draco laughed loudly now. "I thought so. You brazen thing -- and Mum and Dad aren’t bothering you?”

Ronald whistled. “Oh, they’re bothered. Dad’s livid, in fact. On my way down here I stopped by their room to let them know I already had a go at Pansy without a contraception spell and we’d better get a wedding together soon.”

Draco choked out a laugh. “You idiot! You didn’t!”

“We did. How could I refuse after she washed my hair and scrubbed my back for me?”

“Ack! No details,” Draco winced.

Ronald rolled his eyes. “Oh, grow up, Draco. Starting a family is how Pansy wants to move on from all of this and -- what can I say, Prewett genetics must run deep. I’m all for it.”

Draco punched him hard on the bicep. 

Ronald yelped and rubbed his arm, still smiling. “Dad’s so riled up about disgracing Malfoy babies by having them born out of wedlock he’s sworn to have us married by tomorrow evening, in the garden. It’ll be a small affair, of course. But no one cares about things like that right now. It’s perfect, really.”

Draco plucked an olive off the picnic platter. “It is,” he agreed. “You’re a lucky man.”

Ronald huffed. “No luck about it. We made this happen, Pansy and I.” He watched his brother picking the pimento out of the centre of the nicked olive. “What’s wrong, Draco? You look -- I don’t know, jealous isn’t the word. It’s more like -- “

“Wistful,” Draco finished. “Hermione -- she says she’ll marry me, if we ever get around to it, but if it’s not the right thing now, then when?”

Ronald grasped his forearm. “Bring her. Tomorrow. Bring Hermione and the Grangers and marry her here. We can make it two weddings in one, and then we can all get on with our lives, together.”

“We’re eighteen -- “

“Hang it,” Ronald said. “You don’t need a baby. It’s right for us, but that’s personal. It’s all personal. Figure out what’s right for the pair of you. I mean, you’ve been together nearly three years, weathered everything under the stars -- you’ve earned the right to not worry about other people’s ideas about waiting and aging. They’ve got nothing to do with you.”

Draco was nodding into his chest. “Thanks, mate. I’ll think about it.”

Ronald pulled him in for one more hug. Draco returned his embrace, and he stood still even as Ronald kept him longer than he expected. They stood quietly, Draco sensing that Ronald was gathering strength, preparing to say something more, something hard.

“I lost a brother today,” Ronald said. “It’s awful in all sorts of ways -- ones I hadn’t even imagined. But the worst part was seeing George left alone -- his Gemini pair hacked in two. And I’ll admit something now, but only to you. I’m sick with guilt at how relieved I was that it didn't have to be us.” Ronald’s voice cracked, his face pressed hard into Draco’s shoulder, and they clung to each other as he cried.

\------------------------------------------

Hermione Jean Granger was nothing if not a practical young woman and it took no convincing at all for her to join in on the Malfoy wedding already scheduled for the next day. The Grangers themselves had grown accustomed to the flamboyant drama of wizarding life in general and of the Malfoys in particular, and even they came without much complaint to be part of the tiny group that watched their brilliant daughter settle into married life a few months before her nineteenth birthday. 

Narcissa dressed her up like a witch princess, and Hermione was married in a garden of ancient topiaries and rose bushes just beginning to bud. There hadn’t been such a gathering, three Madam Malfoys all in one place, in generations.

For honeymoons, Ronald and Pansy left for a villa on the continent while Draco and Hermione chose a cottage the Malfoys kept in Wales, near the sea. It was uncharacteristically small for a Malfoy property, but the newlyweds didn’t need much space for what they wanted to accomplish while there.

“All I’m hoping for,” Hermione said as Draco ducked slightly to carry her through the doorway, “is a full and proper dose of your potion eleven, to restore me after my long ordeal and initiate me into a beautiful new life.”

“It would be my pleasure,” he murmured into her ear as he kicked the door closed and staggered into bed.

There’s nothing quite like a very young husband well-equipped for attempt after attempt at getting things right. By the time the time came to leave the cottage and return to life in England, the Granger-Malfoys, ever the eager researchers, believed they had this new phase of their lives down to a science and an art. They were comfortable, satisfied, starting to smell the same.

“Are you sad to be going back? Devastated this break is over?” Hermione asked him, her head on his bare chest in the moonlight streaming through their cottage window on their final night in Wales. 

He pulled one of her curls straight and let it spring back. “Not really,” he confessed. “Frankly, it stopped being a break once we got serious about cataloguing all the novel fungi in the garden.”

She giggled and turned her head, her chin on the top of her hand, over his heart. From there, she studied his face in the silver-blue light, all angles and shadows. "My husband makes the most beautiful botanical sketches."

He gave a gentle scoff. "Yes, well. We can't stay in bed all the time. That's what you told me, anyway."

She thrummed her fingers against his ribcage and laid her cheek on his skin again. "Wherever we are, you and I aren't meant for relaxing,” she agreed. “Not when there’s so much to see and know and fix and -- feel.”

She heard the smile in his hummed reply, his fingers curling through her hair, sorting out any snags worked into it from all that time on her back.

“Have you made a decision about pursuing healing as a job yet?” she asked, one finger tracing the line from his ear, along his throat to his shoulder. “I don’t mean to push but -- “

“Pushy? You? No, of course not,” he laughed, untangling his hand from her hair to smooth the skin of her back with the firm pressure of his palms. It felt nice enough to make her sigh, and then he was sighing too. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about Hogwarts instead. About the new start you and McGonagall are planning.”

She sat up slightly as his hands settled into the curves of her waist. “You’d come work with me? As potions master at Hogwarts now Slughorn’s going back into retirement?”

He seemed shy about continuing. “No, actually. As a teacher of fine arts. Literature beyond ancient runes, architecture, drawing -- all the things Hogwarts has never offered, but which life, even a magical life, is a bit hollow without. It was the pure-blood families on the board of governors, people like my father, who kept it out of the curriculum. They wanted high culture for their children alone, to firm up the class divisions, keep people apart. I owe it to the school to help bring it back to everyone.”

She inched up the bed, along his body, to kiss his mouth. “Draco, that’s brilliant.”

“I hope your headmistress thinks so,” he said, pulling her close again, arranging her on top of himself. His stomach was filling with butterflies, the way it still did in the moments right before they joined themselves together. 

She held onto him as he moved, one hand coming free to brush his hair from his forehead. “And if she doesn’t, we’ll find another way.”

“Yes, you and me,” he breathed into her face. “We’ll make it right.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr as dramionedaydream


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